A Strange World, by the Author of 'lady Audley's Secret'

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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Genres: Fiction, Classics

302 pages, Hardcover

Published September 1, 2015

About the author

Mary Elizabeth Braddon was a British Victorian era popular novelist. She was an extremely prolific writer, producing some 75 novels with very inventive plots. The most famous one is her first novel, Lady Audley's Secret (1862), which won her recognition and fortune as well. The novel has been in print ever since, and has been dramatised and filmed several times.

Braddon also founded Belgravia Magazine (1866), which presented readers with serialized sensation novels, poems, travel narratives, and biographies, as well as essays on fashion, history, science. She also edited Temple Bar Magazine. Braddon's legacy is tied to the Sensation Fiction of the 1860s.

She is also the mother of novelist W.B. Maxwell.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Victorian "sensation novel" about inheritance, madness, and murder. The mysteries in the plot will be easily solved by the reader, and are explained just after the halfway point. The story focuses more on how this will affect the lives of the characters. This was a fun read, with entertaining characters and a satisfying ending. It can be found at Project Gutenberg in a number of free ebook formats.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This the first book of Braddon’s that I’ve read. Given both the high volume of her output and the low profile of her current reputation, I expected this to be somewhere between mediocre and moderately good. But it was great.

Braddon’s prose is excellent. It’s clear and engaging, with memorable turns of phrase and well-placed allusions. It was a pleasure just to read the words. The characterization was good as well. Characters were distinct without being caricatures, with motivations that were comprehensible and plausible. The plotting covers well-trodden ground among novels of this era, but the path over that ground felt novel and picturesque.

This book is proof that it’s possible to write a good novel in which the characters are competent and rational. Even the guy who’s a murderer is relatively principled, aside from his one act of violence. The protagonist is the kind of person you’d be lucky to have as a friend; he’s honest, resourceful, intelligent, and thoughtful, consistently making good decisions and appropriately updating his views as new information becomes available. Everything in the book simply makes sense, even people’s mistakes and bad decisions.

If this is typical of Braddon’s work, she ought to be better regarded today. The writing itself was great, and she showed good insight into human nature. To me, this felt like a solid book from a great writer—not quite a masterpiece, but far, far above the average.

[Mbuye · Rating 3 out of 5]

1875 saw the publication of ME Braddon's ‘A Strange World,' coming at the halfway point of her writing career. Having hit upon a winning formula, Braddon uses all the tricks at her disposal in this novel as well. Starting with a secret marriage and going on to murder, blackmail, and including insanity, a secret marriage, the taint of illegitimacy, the stigma of stage acting, and any little peccadillo you might dream up coupled with strict puritanical parents, the tangles of the plot of this novel are entertaining and engrossing. It is in the spirit of the age that the remorse and reformation of the villain is forced into the plot, and slightly deforms the story. Happy endings and retribution evenly handed out to the good guys and bad.

A Micawber manqué is the most interesting character in the novel, but there is nothing more to be said about any other person. The villain is not the worst of Braddon's villains; indeed, in this book alone, there are worse characters than the nominal villain. The hero is a prig, duly punished for his sententiousness. The book carries Braddon's inimitable style and humour as its saving grace. Ultimately, the book is a thriller well worth the reading.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel contains murder, madness and illegitimacy - three of the major themes of Victorian sensation fiction but it's not quite the page turner of Mrs Braddon's best work. It's all fairly predictable and the coincidences that generally abound in the genre are here stretched to the limit. An entertaining enough read but instantly forgettable.