Hide and Seek Audiobook By Wilkie Collins cover art

Hide and Seek

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Hide and Seek

By: Wilkie Collins
Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
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Appearing in 1854, Hide and Seek was Wilkie Collins’s third published novel. At the centre of the plot is the mystery surrounding a deaf and dumb girl known as Madonna, whom the painter Valentine Blyth rescues from her life as a circus performer. But it is only when Blyth’s friend Zack Thorpe rebels against his disciplinarian father and falls into bad company that the secret of Madonna is revealed.

Combining charm and excitement, Hide and Seek is presented in two halves: the first is leisurely and discursive while the second picks up the pace, foreshadowing Collins’s later sensational fiction.

Hide and Seek is persuasively delivered by Nicholas Boulton, who has read several of Collins’s novels, including No Name, Armadale, The Dead Secret, and Man and Wife.

Public Domain (P)2022 Naxos AudioBooks UK Ltd. Classics Historical Fiction Fiction
Engaging Characters • Brilliant Storytelling • Intriguing Secret • Distinctive Voices • Charming Story
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the reader dies an excellent job of bringing to life each if the characters. I didn't want the book to end!

favorite Wilkie Collins book

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Not the best of Wilkie Collins, but I still enjyed the book quite a lot.
You get brilliant storytelling, interesting colourful characters and flawless narration from Nicholas Boulton to boot. What is there not to like?

Another solid story from a master storyteller

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This is one of Collins’s early novels, published several years before The Woman in White. The story centers around a young deaf and dumb woman and those who seek to discover—or to conceal—her parentage. Maybe not quite as impressive as the author’s novels of the 1860’s, but still a good tale. Nicholas Boulton’s reading, as usual, is first-class.

Recommended to fans of Victorian literature

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Great story left one guessing till the very end. I thoroughly enjoy Wilkie Colin's books

Very entertaining!

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One of Mr. Collins’s best tales and I’ve read most of his work. I will confess that my favorite book is Basil. I had to read it twice in order to fully appreciate its nuance and I am very glad I did so.

Excellent

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Like Dickens at his best, this is the perfect balance between heartthrob pathos and gentle, good-natured comedy. Like Dickens, Collins creates and populates a world that lives in your earbuds. Sometimes – as when Mr. Blythe exhibits his latest paintings – it’s a world you wouldn’t mind living in yourself.

True, the central plot turn might strike some listeners as predictable. Given everything that precedes that turn, I consider it inevitable. No, this one isn’t as deeply engaging as Collins’ four great novels. But this charming story repays your attention handsomely and is interesting as a milestone on the way to those four great stories. As always, Nicholas Boulton is simply superb at the mic.

Collins Learned a lot from His Mentor

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A very Wilkie Collin’s story. Loads of coincidences, high emotion, drama, and secrets by the teapot full. The narrator was wonderful. He was able to create distinctive, realistic voices for each character and somehow kept them all consistent over this very, very long story.

Wonderful Narration

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As usual Nicholas Boulton does an amazing job bringing a Wilkie Collins story to life. I even found myself pausing and replaying some of the particularly delightful turns of phrase. This one is certainly worth your time if you're already a Wilkie Collins fan. As many of his books do, this one has a secret at the heart of it, and piecing it all together is a good part of the fun, especially since there are many disparate characters at the beginning. I think it's fair to say that Hide and Seek is more about the characters and their dealings than the plot, which is kind of thin and not really discernible until what seemed like more than halfway into the book. Thinking about it, I wonder if old Wilkie knew what he wanted the plot of this to be when he started writing, because it veers around from one character to another, making the reader think the plot could lie with this main character or that other character, but instead, any movement in the plot lies with a character introduced quite late. As a result, it took a little patience to get into the story, which is why I believe it's for a Wilkie fan rather than someone who hasn't read his top 4 novels, but all that said, I found it very enjoyable once all the main characters were introduced.

Very worthwhile if you're a Wilkie fan

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Not as great as the Women in White or Moonstone but a fabulous book not to be missed
I could not put it down
A fabulous narrator

Wilkie my Idol

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As usual, Nicholas Boulton is an absolute gem of a narrator. And Wilkie’s flow of adjectives and painting a picture are already there, but the story is super boring for the first 2/3 and only gets mildly better by the end. I’m a huge fan of 19th century novels (and Wilkie Collins in particular), but this one isn’t worth it. Sorry to say.

Wilkie learning his craft

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