The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

If you read no other ridiculously long Victorian novel in your life, read this one. Conspiracies! Counts!! Mad relatives!!!
.

How am I going to do this justice? Ok, multiple narrators tell the tale of how Sir Percival (HA!) Glyde came to marry the young, sweet, impressionable Laura Fairlie despite the misgivings of her savvy, man-faced half-sister Marian and her infatuated drawing-master, Mr Hartright - misgivings which arise largely due to an anonymous note sent by the Woman in White (whom, incidentally, Hartright happened to assist one night on a lonely London road some weeks ago, only to find later that she'd ESCAPED FROM THE ASYLUM! Also, she sucks at anonymity) about Sir Glyde's Terrible Secret.

.

I know. To crib and distort a Tim Gunn-ism, that's a whole lot of book. And that's not even taking into account the mesmeric, Karl-Lagerfeldian Count Fosco, who is enormous in both body and influence and who provides comic relief by speaking almost exclusively in exclamation points. Seriously. The Count. I could not get enough.

.

And it's long. The whole thing is so terribly Victorian, and there is much wringing of hands and repressing of tempers and checking the words of affection that rise to one's lips and it just goes on and on. My copy runs to 617 pages before notes and such, but it's the kind of long that I can get behind. If Jane Eyre (which, as my mother claims, 'is a great book, even though nothing really happens') doesn't wear you out, then Woman in White is your shit.

.

Nine caterpillars.