No Name

This is a very good book - if you enjoy a leisurely stroll through the past with an excellent cast of characters and a cracking good plot. Collins was a champion of the under-dog in a much less sentimental way than his friend, Dickens, and in this story he takes on the establishment over the laws on illegitimacy and inheritance. The heroines are disinherited through no fault of their own - and Collins clearly disapproves of visiting the crime of the parents on to innocent children. The older sister accepts her fate and sets out to earn her living, the younger sister does the opposite. What I found remarkable in this book is that the main character, Magdalen, although defying convention, is entirely bound by it. She cannot do anything on her own as a woman, she needs a man to support, guide and assist her. She is almost absolutely powerless to act on her own behalf in her society and her only real power is her sex appeal, which she uses remorselessly to marry for revenge. However, everything she does, all her plotting, scheming and subterfuge, gets her absolutely nowhere. She does not succeed in getting back the inheritance she and her sister were cheated out of. Nor does Collins allow his characters any of those amazing leaps of luck, logic or circumstance that aid so many other heroes and heroines in such an unlikely way in so many other novels. I disagree with Virginia Blain who wrote the introduction. I do believe Magdalen is entitled to happiness at the end of the novel. What she does may have been utterly shocking to a Victorian reader, but it all reads as entirely plausible and understandable to a modern reader. She suffers quite enough to satisfy even the most hard hearted of Victorian readers and I was delighted when she achieved happiness almost by accident at the end of the novel.The ending was not a 'cop out', it was perfect. As other reviewers have said, this novel would make a cracking costume drama - where are you, BBC/ITV?!

Received

'No name' décrit l'histoire d'une vengeance menée par une jeune fille qui ne veut accepter le destin qui se présente à sa sœur et elle, à cause des lois injustes de l'Angleterre du XIXe siècle. Même si les moyens qu'elle met en œuvre peuvent sembler à nous habitués aux romans et films d'espionnage menés tambours battants avec tout ce que la technologie moderne peut offrir, je me suis délectée du style de l'auteur. Wilkie Collins est souvent décrit comme l'inventeur du roman à suspense et il est vrai qu'il y en a dans ces romans mais ce sont plus ses talents de narrateur qui me font aimé ces livres: la description précise, pleine de réalité des personnages, de leur caractère, de leurs pensées et la belle prose rappelant Alexandre Dumas.

This is the story of two young women, daughters of a wealthy family, who discover through a cruel trick of fate that they have been left penniless after their parents die suddenly. Wholly unwilling to submit to her lot and become a governess, the elder, Magdalen, decides she will obtain her fair share of her father's estate from her estranged relations, regardless of the deceit, plots and subterfuges she must engage in to do this. Wilkie is at the height of his powers here, and has written a real page-turner. I could hardly put it down.

I got the book with the same cover. Like the vintage book. The spine is pressed a bit. But glad to have a vintage edition copy of classic.