The Woman in White

By: Wilkie Collins

Narrated by: Glen McCready, Rachel Bavidge

Length: 27 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

Walter Hartright, a drawing teacher to two sisters, wants to marry Laura, though she is betrothed to another. But who is the mysterious woman in white he encounters?

Wilkie Collins was a master of suspense, but his transfer to audiobook requires a cast of readers to faithfully reflect the11 different characters who tell the story. Naxos AudioBooks brings together a strong cast to bring alive the mystery and suspense of The Woman in White.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

Public Domain (P)2008 Naxos Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Collins's mid-Victorian novel is one of the first, and possibly still the greatest, of all literary thrillers." ( The Irish Times)

Mixed Bag of Voice Talent

I will comment first on the overall voice performances; I have not listened to very many ensemble cast versions of recorded books and over all this cast did a good job and the quality was good. The woman who read for Marian did a great job as Marian, but her interpretation of The Count's voice was awful...just...terrible. That is my only complaint on the performance side of things. The overall story of The Woman in White is good. I went into this reading with no knowledge of the plot and there were several spots where I was on the edge of my seat in anticipation of what was to come. Wilkie kept me guessing for most of the novel in regards to the mysteries that were taking place. The end of the story does drag on a bit; rather like an old James Bond film where the bad guy reveals his whole secret plan with 30 minutes still to go in the movie, but it was interesting to hear the different perspectives from the "witnesses". Overall I'd recommend this story to anyone who enjoys a mystery/thriller/courtroom drama.

Go for The Moonstone instead

I've read Wilkie Collins' the Moonstone twice now, and it is a fantastic book. It's similar to The Woman in White in that he presents the story in multiple narratives from different characters. However, I found The Woman in White to be overly drawn out even for a Victorian novel. I enjoyed listening to it because the performances were really good, but the story just went on and on, and was mostly pretty obvious except for maybe one twist. I don't see myself reading or listening to this book again, whereas The Moonstone is one I'll pick up every five years or so I'm sure. If you want to invest 30 hours of listening on Wilkie Collins, go for the Moonstone!

Performance of voice actors held my attention!

I have tried to read this book for many years. I had heard many a movie had employed various pieces of its plot lines and thus it was considered the ‘mother of all screen plays’. This audible form was affordable and I thought it might ease the monotony of an hour on my exercise machine each am. In a very short time I began to look forward to my odious exercise hour and hearing more of the story. Soon I was listening while knitting, sewing and housekeeping. I hope these actors will be used often in future audible books. They certainly earned their fees and my admiration, for their animated voices made the story intriguing and thoroughly enjoyable!

Excellent story.

Excellent story. Well written. Well performed. Would recommend you to listen. Well worth your time.

. . . And they all lived happily ever after.

I didn't know anything about this book when I started listening to it, other than it came highly recommended, and that it was pretty long. And it was a mystery novel. So, it turns out that Wilkie Collins was a Victorian author, and was good friends with Charles Dickens until Dickens' popularity took off, but Wikie's not so much. I understand, though, that Collins' popularity is starting to grow now. Too bad he's not around to enjoy the benefits.

I didn't know it was a Victorian novel, and as such has the characteristics of being long, very wordy, mostly about the upper class, etc. etc. The reason so many of them are long and wordy is because they were serialized, forerunners of the soap opera of today. People could not wait to get the next installment to find out what was happening. I read a book in the newspaper in serial form one time, and it was great fun. Nowadays, we seem too impatient to read a book like that. We want to know right now what happens in the end. So we read all day and half the night instead of doing other things that we should probably be doing instead. But we find out what happens a lot sooner than waiting for the newspaper every day.

As far as the mystery part, yeh, it was a pretty good mystery, but a bit predictable. There were some pretty good twists and turns, but *** spoiler alert*** (sort of), they all lived happily ever after. Except for the people who died, of whom there was a fair number.

In any case, I did enjoy this book a great deal, but it did move slowly and was very wordy. It won't go on my favorites list, but I am glad I read it. I enjoyed the narrators very much, except for the reading of Count Fosco. He was supposed to be from Italy, but sounded 100% English. Every time he was called a foreigner, I though, Wait, where is he from? Oh yeh, Italy. Hmmmm.

Long and not up to Snuff

I listened to this because of the mostly great reviews, but I was not nearly so impressed. The narration was really great and the prose were good, but the story was not quite up to snuff. This is a mystery, but is very long and not very mysterious. It seems to me any attentive reader will guess the ending long, long before it comes. Then the last forth of the book is a detailed rehashing of what happened. Several of the characters are more caricatures than real people. Many mysteries depend on improbable story elements, but I did not buy several of the essentials of this mystery. I like some Victorian romances, but the romance part of this story was too simple to be worth such a long work. Nevertheless this is not a bad book at all, just way too long for what it is.

SUPERB, exciting, engrossing story

Style is five stars, narration is five stars, story as well. The colorful characters are beyond compare. One of the best books ever.

Better than expected

It was a good story for its day. The language is old fashioned but it was good.

Superb

This is the best written audible I have heard and one if the best written books. You can start anywhere in the book and without knowing the storyline enjoy the writing and performance. The untracked of this story are exceptional but what makes it superb is the way it is written and choice of words selected. I will listen to this more than once as I did Audibles Proust.

Most enjoyable

The only part that didn't work for me was the voice of Marian, it didn't fit my picture of her and at first seemed to hint a "lower class" accent. Everyone else was spot on for me.