I read this book when I was a teenager and had never re-read it until some weeks ago. I chose to listen to the audio book and realised that I did not remember anything about it. This wasn’t so surprising — my memory isn’t the greatest and first reads tend to be skim-reads, so details usually escape me.

These days, I notice that my attention wanders when I read (a symptom of our difficult situation or just me?), and listening to audio books works much better as I’m not tempted to skip sections when someone is reading me the story (I usually listen while I cook or when I’m working on my miniatures.)

I admit I was daunted by the length of the book — 25hrs — but it hardly felt that long. The chapters are short and the pace is brisk. Wilkie Collins first published this novel in installments, from 1859 to 1860, in All the Year Round, a magazine that belonged to his close friend Charles Dickens magazine (and also in Harper’s Weekly in America), and he knew how to keep his readers in suspense and wanting to know what would happen next!

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