Hide and Seek

By: Wilkie Collins

Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton

Length: 15 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

Very worthwhile if you're a Wilkie fan

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.

Recommended to fans of Victorian literature

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.

Wilkie learning his craft

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.