Kirkus Reviews
Master Victorian entertainer Collins's fourth novel, and the first to be serialized in weekly installments, dates from 1857. It begins at Porthgenna Tower, the Cornish estate of Captain Treverton, at the deathbed of the Captain's wife. Before she dies, she insists on having her trusted maid, Sarah Leeson, write her husband a letter giving an account of a secret only the two women share, and swear, on pain of haunting, not to destroy the letter or to take it away from Porthgenna herself. Scrupulously following her mistress's bidding, Sarah hides the letter in an unused room of the Tower, leaves a note telling Treverton that his wife confided a secret to her she is afraid to reveal to him—and then vanishes from Cornwall, leaving the house, which Treverton has come to hate, to be abandoned, then purchased by a family whose blind son, Leonard Frankland, marries the Captain's daughter Rosamond years later when the real complications get underway. Modern readers, who will have no trouble figuring out the dead secret long before the characters do, are more likely to be engaged by the Dickensian minor characters, the hints of long-dormant intrigue, the heavy-breathing melodrama Collins would bring to perfection only three years later in The Woman in White, and, almost as an afterthought, the implied portrait of a whole social order few novelists in our more knowing time would ever attempt.
FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile
Nicholas Boulton’s narration of this wonderfully entertaining audiobook is simply astonishing. He keeps listeners on track though its shifts in time period and plot. As a work of "sensation fiction," this story of Rosamond Treverton Franklin's discovery of her late mother's secret was intended to excite and amuse its nineteenth-century audience, although the suspense is tame by contemporary standards. The magic lies in Boulton's flawless rendering of the richly nuanced characters of all ages, genders, nationalities, and social classes; the splendid English country settings; and the touches of humor throughout. Boulton subtly varies his pace to complement the narrative moment. A thoroughly enjoyable listening experience. M.J. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
FEBRUARY 2021 - AudioFile
Nicholas Boulton’s narration of this wonderfully entertaining audiobook is simply astonishing. He keeps listeners on track though its shifts in time period and plot. As a work of "sensation fiction," this story of Rosamond Treverton Franklin's discovery of her late mother's secret was intended to excite and amuse its nineteenth-century audience, although the suspense is tame by contemporary standards. The magic lies in Boulton's flawless rendering of the richly nuanced characters of all ages, genders, nationalities, and social classes; the splendid English country settings; and the touches of humor throughout. Boulton subtly varies his pace to complement the narrative moment. A thoroughly enjoyable listening experience. M.J. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
