Armadale Audiobook By Wilkie Collins cover art

Armadale

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Armadale

By: Wilkie Collins
Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton, Rachel Atkins, David Rintoul, John Sackville, Lucy Scott
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Two young men linked by a familial murder mystery, a beautiful yet wicked governess who spins a web of deceit, and five individuals named Allan Armadale

Wilkie Collins' follow-up to The Woman in White and No Name is an innovative take on mistaken identity, the nature of evil, and the dark underbelly of Victorian England. The story concerns two distant cousins, both named Allan Armadale, and the impact of a family tragedy, which makes one of them a target of the murderous Lydia Gwilt, a vicious and malevolent charmer determined to get her hands on the Armadale fortune. Will the real Allan Armadale be revealed, and will he survive the plot against his life?

Download the accompanying reference guide.Public Domain (P)2020 Naxos Audiobooks Classics Cozy Fiction Mystery
Complex Plot • Unexpected Twists • Flawless Performance • Strong Female Character • Layered Mystery • Splendid Cast
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Narration was spot on. Story was fascinating, but most of the second half is told from the point of view of characters who are the antagonists, and the characters you grew to like in the beginning have less to do. My desire to see where it would all lead got me to the end, and it was an interesting ending, but it did leave me feeling less satisfied than Collins's other book with the same narrators, NO NAME. ARMADALE delves deep into the psychology of crime and criminals, and into most of the characters' heads. This was fine for me when the story was being told through the eyes of characters I liked, but when it veered into unlikable POV's for long stretches, it was decidedly more difficult. This is probably my own personal preference, however. If you're looking to commit to reading one of Collins's lesser known novels, I personally think NO NAME is more entertaining and satisfying, but this was also interesting in its own way.

Great narration

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The story never gets boring and is fascinating until the end. No one is without flaws which is part of the charm

Wilkie Collins at his best

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This is the third of Wilkie Collins’s four great novels of the 1860s, the others being The Woman in White, No Name, and The Moonstone. The lives of two cousins, both named Allan Armadale, seem inextricably wound together. Is it fate or merely chance? One of the cousins is unaware of their kinship; the other goes by an assumed name and is haunted by a crime committed by his late father. The narrative is increasingly dominated by a third character, the beautiful but deceitful Lydia Gwilt, whose schemes threaten the life of one or both of the cousins. Armadale is a melodrama in the best sense of the word, and the Naxos cast is splendid!

Classic Collins

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This is by far my favorite of his books! Gripping! Even better than Woman in White

Wilke Collins

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Worth every minute. You’ll be so sorry to reach the end and have to leave these marvelous characters!

Wonderfully engaging!

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i liked a lot about this book and i especially loved the narration, but i just couldn’t care at all about the protagonists. they were both so infuriatingly stupid. also one of the major plot points relies on that idiotic “let me explain!” vs “i don’t want to hear your explanation!” trope which i just cannot. overall though, it was worth reading and it kept my interest engaged all through.

extremely stupid protagonists

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Excellent performance(s) of an intriguing narrative! I feel like I know each character so well.

Excellent

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Wilkie Collins never disappoints. All of the mystery, twists and turns. A+ story and the performance is excellent.

Epic bromance

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I really love Wilkie Collin’s. No doubt the English like him as much. These books are so well narrated that you cannot put them down.

Another success.

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Note: This review contains no spoilers

Chekov once observed that if there’s a gun over the mantle in the first act, it had better go off in the third. Given their dates, it’s doubtful if Wilkie Collins ever heard that sound bit of dramatic advice. But he used it to great effect, perhaps never better than here.

Some have complained that the first act is a bit long. But Collins has more than one gun to place over his mantle, and they all need to be primed and loaded. As the story gets going, the wait for the inevitable fusillade—in conjunction with Collins’ flair for the unexpected twist and turn—creates more than enough exquisite dramatic tension to sustain interest over 30 hours. Of course, like any good Victorian novel, this one repays that investment of time with more than thrills and spills. There’s humor:

“A man who is entering on a course of reformation ought, if virtue is its own reward, to be a man engaged in an essentially inspiriting pursuit. But virtue is not always its own reward; and the way that leads to reformation is remarkably ill-lighted for so respectable a thoroughfare.”- Book the Second, Chapter IV

And memorable observations of our human condition:

“The influence exercised by the voice of public scandal is a force which acts in opposition to the ordinary law of mechanics. It is strongest, not by concentration, but by distribution. To the primary sound we may shut our ears; but the reverberation of it in echoes is irresistible.” – Book the Third, Chapter VII

Mercifully, this story lacks one other hallmark of the Victorian novel, the sentimental soapbox of social justice. These characters are too interesting and complex to be reduced to mere emblems and exemplars.

Some reviewers cavil at the myriad coincidences. Collins himself has his female lead, Lydia Gwilt, exclaim, “How unnatural all this would be if it was written in a book!” But this is not just a Victorian novel; it is a Victorian "novel of sensation", of mysteries, secrets and veiled motives, where, as the lawyer writes in the second to last chapter, “…rogues perpetually profit by the misfortunes and necessities of honest men.” Everything revolves around curses, fate, superstition, and whether we can escape what, for lack of a less melodramatic term, I’ll call destiny. In that context, each coincidence functions not as a cheap plot device, but a deepening of the central conundrum: is it of natural or supernatural origin? In an endnote, Collins leaves that up to us. For myself, history is rather too liberally studded with coincidence for me to think them wholly coincidental.

Third in the series of four remarkable novels Collins produced in the 1860’s, this strikes me as his best. It is certainly his most complex and ambitious from the standpoint of theme, plot, motivation, and character development. Whether he’s reading Lord Byron, Chretien de Troyes, Alessandro Manzoni or Wilkie Collins, Nicholas Boulton hands in a flawless performance. And the same goes for the rest of the cast, especially Rachael Atkins and Lucy Scott.

Perhaps the Best of Collins’ Four Best Novels

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