Hide and Seek

A mystery without a murder!! Excellent! Good ending.

I've read quite a few Victorian novels, including the works of Trollope, Dickens, Eliot and Wilkie Collins. This isn't Collins' best or most compelling work (those honors belonging to The Moonstone and The Woman in White, of course), but it is still entertaining, well written and a pretty quick read. The story revolves around an adopted deaf and dumb girl, her adoptive parents and the mystery of her biological parentage. The characters are well drawn, but there is no grand love story as there usually is in Victorian novels. The Kindle version I read was just fine. The dictionary worked, the font was fine, there were very few typos.

I loved this book. I have only read "The Haunted Hotel and Other Stories". I have yet to read "The Woman in White" and "The Moonstone" (which I will read soon enough...) so I am not most reliable Wilkie Collins fan (fast becoming one though). I have read other Victorian authors but I find Collins to be the most enjoyable (not forgetting Braddon as well...equally beautiful in her writing). His prose is a pleasure to read, it feels as if he really treasured his gift for composition and narrative. Each paragraph resonates with warmth, tenderness, compassion and care. The mystery of the story draws you in while the characters revolve gently on the stage, moving from each with ease. I was swept up in the atmosphere, the pace. It is a novel you don't want to leave for too long. Work, family, hobbies... I simply wanted to push everything aside and get to the ending. Of course, sadly, when you come to the END you don't want it to end. There is a bit melodrama here, I'll admit. (It was an early novel following "Basil".) And there are some coincidences here that fall into the "sensational" and "stretched" category. Otherwise, the great writing and the pathos for the characters make up for it. A must for Wilkie Collins fans and readers of Victorian literature. A must for Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts.

Many times I come across lesser-known books by well-known authors that really surprise me, such as 'Hide and Seek'. As I read this book, I was reminded of having read a Somerset Maugham novel that was not very well-known, and enjoying it far more than such offerings as 'The Moon and Sixpence'. 'Hide and Seek' opens with a description of a high-spirited young boy getting himself into trouble with his father, and being punished at home, which leads a reader to believe that he, or his parents, are the 'central characters' of the rest of the work. However, this isn't the case. The story goes on to introduce readers to an entertaining cast that includes the devoted and caring Mrs. Peckover, 'foster mother' to young Mary, a girl stricken deaf and dumb at an early age, who Mrs. Peckover takes into her care after Mary's mother dies, and attempts to raise her in the circus where Mr. and Mrs. Peckover are employed. Also introduced are Valentine Blythe, a painter, and his wife Lavvie, a poor, sickly woman confined to her bed and room for the majority of her life. The young boy from Chapter 1, Zachary Thorpe, also re-appears as a young man, still full of the same high-spiritedness and defiance of authority that he possessed as a child. All of the above characters figure into the first half of the story in a significant way.....Mary's adoption by the Blythe's, Valentine's friendship with Zack , and Mary's girlish 'crush' on him...but none of them 'affect' the story as much as the mysterious Matthew Marksman who enters the tale at the mid-point of the novel...where a long-ago 'mystery' is revealed, and ultimately solved. To give away any more of the story would spoil the ending. Wilkie Collins, while not (in my opinion) as gifted a storyteller as Charles Dickens, offers an entertaining story with 'Hide and Seek'....for fans of literature of the 19th Century, and of Wilkie Collins OR Charles Dickens, give 'Hide and Seek' a try. It's a clever story, with well-written and well-realized characters, and easy to follow. Even with the plot 'contrivances' that Collins worked in, it still doesn't spoil the story.

This is one of my favorite Collins novels. Mr. Valentine Blyth, an artist, is certainly a delightful character and his devotion to his invalid wife is moving. The Blyths's lives are changed when they meet a lovely orphan girl who is an exhibit at a circus because she is deaf and mute. The plot centers around Mary's mysterious background and the tragic story of her mother. The characters are well portrayed, although Mary, the Blyths' adopted daughter, is almost too perfect. The plot is quite melodramatic but interesting, a litle farfetched. I recommend this for anyone who has never read Wilkie Collins.