This is essentially yet another story of marry in haste; repent in leisure. Every reader had their period when they were ruled by their hormones; a few of us went so far as to think we "fell in love at first sight." Wilkie's character Basil does this with a young woman he sees riding the bus from London to the suburbs, one day. This 20-something, fresh-out-of-law-school, rich, aristocratic, spoiled young man thinks he knows all he needs to know about"Margaret" by looking at her beautiful face and gorgeous figure. Much woe is to come to him before sexually-mature Margaret is finished ruining Basil's life. ( )

4.5

There is something I love about a Wilkie Collins novel. I think it is the way he builds the mystery and suspense without any overtly horrible occurrences. I thought Basil rather soft-headed and unsympathetic in the beginning, but as the story progressed, I began to feel real concern for this young man pretty much trapped in a mess of his own making. I decided early on that the father was not going to be as unforgiving as the son believed, but Wilkie Collins’ characters seldom do what we think they will do (which is part of the enjoyment of reading him), and I found the father as exasperating as the sister was kind.

The story depends very heavily on chance and fate to draw these tragedy-bound characters into one another’s spheres. When you have accepted that element, you must concede that anyone would be as foolish and headstrong as Basil over a woman he can’t even say he barely knows (as he does not know her in the least when he decides he is completely in love and must have her and no other). But, Collins handles this deftly and I totally believed the circumstances that ensued after the chance encounter of Basil and Margaret on an omnibus. The lesson here must surely be “never take public transportation if you can afford a private cab.”

I’m sorry it took me so long to get to this, but I am very pleased I put it on my challenge this year. I loved Woman in White and the Moonstone, so Basil is proof for me, if needed, that I should attempt to read everything in Collins’ canon. Next up: No Name.
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Basil es la historia de un hombre débil, hipersensible, que se enamora de una jovencita a la que ve un día por casualidad y decide casarse con ella sin conocerla en absoluto. A partir de este momento, un juego, iniciado de forma aparentemente inocente, culminará desvelando la mezquina, ruin y angustiosa realidad de cada uno de los jugadores en el drama.

Another classic from the mid-nineteenth century, and it didn't disappoint me. The pace seemed slow in the beginning, but it picked up as the story progressed. A good read, indeed... ( )

An enjoyable couple of evenings can be spent watching a young Wilkie Collins pick up steam in this early novel. A naive young hero, an absurdly overpowering romance with a girl met on an omnibus, that new-fangled mode of transport where persons of differing social strata share (gasp!) the same space; a greedy and domineering father (actually, two of them), a mysterious and forbidding stranger, the usual angelic and self-sacrificing sister. What's fun is watching Collins build his story through the eyes of his callow eponymous hero, who reveals as much about his great love and the peculiar marital arrangement he agrees to by what he doesn't say as what he does. Even though we can only know what Basil knows in this first-person narrative, the reader cottons on much more quickly than he does, and the red flags loom large when we start to think: "Oh. Wait a minute. This... this is not going to turn out well." It does not, of course. It's a Victorian Gothic romance, after all. Greed, betrayal, violence, estrangement, floods of tears and swoonings, and several juicy deathbeds... Pour a glass of sherry, prod up the fire in the grate, draw close the dark curtains, and savor with a smile. For people who like this sort of thing (and I am happily one of them), this is sort of thing they like. ( )