Originally published on my blog here in June 2008.The Dark Clue is a sequel, of sorts, to Wilkie Collins' classic The Woman in White. It has the same central characters: artist Walter Harkwright, and his sister-in-law Marion. Rich from his marriage but still relatively unsuccessful as an artist, Walter is approached to write a biography of JMW Turner, as a counterblast from still-living friends of the famous artist to a scurrilous biography raking up scandal (the actual first biography of Turner by Walter Thornbury). But as he and Marion investigate, they discover that Turner did indeed have a dark side, and the truth about the revolutionary painter is at the least going to be more complicated than Walter's initial assessment that his "life of him will be quick work indeed".The Dark Clue re-uses the narrative technique of The Woman in White, purporting to be a collection of letters and diary entries, with Marion's diary being probably the chief source. While Laura, Walter's beloved in Collins' novel and now his wife, was absent from the stage for most of The Woman in White, she appears only as the author of a handful of letters in The Dark Clue, which mostly are complaints that Walter is neglecting her and their children. Wilson picks up on the feeling that must strike most readers of Collin's novel, that Walter and Marion would be extremely well suited to each other, while Laura is an abstraction for which he unfortunately develops a romantic passion. For Collins, Laura is a personification of persecuted innocent beauty (a very Victorian female character); for Wilson, she is a personification of a dutiful wife and mother. For both, she is a cipher, at best a passive plot device, and not really a character at all.The differences between the two writers is perhaps best seen in their handling of the relationship between Walter and Marion. Collins, as far as I remember, leaves their interest in each other unspoken, unacknowledged even by the characters themselves. Wilson, more direct, engineers a moment of self revelation for Marion which beings a new dark note to their research together. Writing at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Wilson can obviously be far more graphic than Collins, about this and other aspects of the novel as well. This makes The Dark Clue more immediate, but much less subtle than The Woman in White. For much of the earlier novel, Collins sets up an air of menace that seems far beyond what Wilson's straightforwardness can do. Even so, he manages to leave the exact nature of Turner's scandalous activities frustratingly unspecified, preferring to concentrate on the effect that learning about them has on Walter's morals; I found this very unsatisfying indeed. The consequent lack of impact makes the subtitle "a novel of suspense" seem rather inaccurate; I assumed that it was one more item inherited from Collins' novel, but this is not the case.Turner clearly would be a great subject for a biography, whether the biographer believed the more scandalous stories or not. But the structure of The Dark Clue is not really suited to a biography in the way that it is to the unravelling of the murky plots in The Woman in White. This is a novel where the initial idea is more interesting than its execution; it could have been another The French Lieutenant's Woman but isn't well enough done to reach anywhere near that level.While it is fairly obvious to compare a sequel to a classic novel with the original, this is not always something which the reader feels inclined to do. There are, for example, many sequels to Pride and Prejudice which make no attempt to be anything other than humorous romantic novels, and it is perfectly reasonable for them to succeed on that level without approaching the greatness of Jane Austen. But Wilson fairly clearly sets out to write a novel which is a worthy partner to The Woman in White (and the blurb and reviews on the cover reinforce this). This means that, in my view, it becomes reasonable to criticise Wilson because he is not as good a writer as Collins, who is, after all, not himself a master in the class of (say) Dickens or Tolstoy, so a modest target compared with some that could have been chosen. For a "novel of suspense", The Dark Clue is unpardonably dull, for a biographical, historical novel, it is insufficiently focused on its subject.
I really enjoyed the first 100 pages and the writing gave me the sense that I was on the trail with the narrator. The description and analysis of JMW Turner's pictures were wonderful and beautifully written. However I did need to google the paintings themselves. I am not sure why I lost interest after page 100 - I couldn't cope any more with the intricacies of the detective story I guess. I couldn't connect with the blurbs on the backcover that's for sure - why would the author recreate a book written by another author? I am rating it with 3 stars for the enjoyment I got from the first few chapters.
Do You like book The Dark Clue: A Novel (2003)?
Wow! A book of real literary and psychological ambition. Wilson takes the hero of a Wilkie Collins novel and sets him on a vertiginous quest to unravel the hidden horrors encoded in Turner's paintings. He uses the epistolatory structure of early 19th century fiction and finds a totally successful voice for his characters. The tension of a psychological/art historical thriller is sustained by passages of exquisite description - sample the chapter on the South Downs: beautifully realized. And the descent into the climactic maelstrom provides a really intense finale.
—Nick Thomas
The spoiler free version: This is a loooong slow start, and you should plan to hang in for at least 150 fairly static pages before it picks up. You had also better know a whole lot about the Victorian cultural scene. It would not do you any harm to go rent Mr.TURNER (the movie, which came out in 2015) which will give you an idea of the main character. You will get no help from the author, who assumes you know all these people. All the other people in the book are merely researchers; it is Turner who is the subject.I agree with the other critiquers, that none of the characters we already know of act in character. The book breaks its back at a crucial point, which is why IMO it is not a success. In more detail:(view spoiler)[The plot of the book, as far as I can make out, runs like this:THIS IS A SPOILER, okay?1. Walter Hartright sets out to write a book about Turner, the famous painter.2. He gradually learns that Turner, while a genius, might have had serious problems as well.3. This sends Walter around the bend and after a couple rounds with prostitutes he comes home and rapes his sister-in-law. Laid out like this, you can see the gap. How does the work get from 2 to 3? It beats me. It cannot be that Turner, possessed of your common or garden H.P. Lovecraftian Eldritch Evil, corrupts all who look into his life. There are at least two other people in the book doing it, who do not have a breakdown involving pervy sex. Can it be envy, pure? All other artists, unable to abide Turner's genius, go wacky? But there is no display of sociopathic outbreak among the other many artists in the book. I am forced to conclude that Walter himself has a mental or spiritual flaw which, under pressure, cracks and sends him into a psychotic episode. This would make sense except that he has been under considerable pressure before and came through heroically. (hide spoiler)]
—Brenda Clough
My, now, this was something.Walter Hartright and sister-in-law Marian (characters from Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White) are commissioned to write a biography of the recently deceased British Painter, J. M. W. Turner. BTW - at the beginning, the choice of these two characters seems rather arbitrary, but the original novel's dynamic between these two begins to kick in about midway through.The novel is in the form of letters and journal fragments, and as bits and pieces of Turner's secretive and multi-layered life begin to be uncovered, and the motives of all parties involved start to be questioned, the truths about more lives than just Turner's are revealed. The questions regarding the key painting, The Bay of Baiae bring out a near-Lovecraftian cast upon the whole matter.I had, by an odd coincidence, just seen the movie Mr. Turner, and I must say they complemented each other quite nicely. There's far more in those paintings than I ever suspected.
—Elderberrywine
