Review on: Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Rating: 4.5/5
Reading this book has been a long journey that I’m glad to say, I was able to finish in 2016. Over 10 months and a little over 1000 pages later, I am glad to have read and been companion to the journeys of Detective Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson through industrial London.
This compilation of some of Sherlock Holmes’ stories was a great introduction (or re-introduction) to the character of this great detective sleuth – his genius, his quirks, his weaknesses, his personality. For readers like me who have seen or read about Holmes’ adventures in other forms of media, this is a great re-introduction to the character as it gives a more in-depth view of who Holmes is, what he does, and how he goes about doing things. There’s a lot about Holmes that I knew and read in the novels, but much more that I didn’t know about him that I saw in his adventures. The same goes for Dr. John Watson, who tells the stories from his perspective as the companion-slash-sidekick of Sherlocks’ adventures. His perspective on Holmes and how the cases are told, all give introduction and explain his personality and character in a way that some depictions of him in other forms of media do not.
This volume 1 novel has been an adventure in itself. The beginning of the pages is a little wordy and somewhat dragging on, introducing Sherlock in a somewhat comprehensive manner that may leave the reader a little tired. It in fact took me quite a number of reads to get through the first 50 pages or so of the book. But what’s beautiful about the book, is that it’s about so many different stories, making each case a new adventure and a new mystery to tackle. It can be more easily read by dividing each reading time into one to two cases. And yet, in as much as each story within this book stands on its own, it is also beautifully compiled in such a way that the previous stories have a bearing on later stories, and latter stories refer back to earlier stories, making the book a somewhat seamless one-piece novel.
Apart from the novels and the characters themselves, one of the things that surprised me as I was reading through the book, was how much detail Arthur Conan Doyle put into his characters and his stories. Clearly, each novel is not just a man’s imagination put to words – it is done with much research, endowed always with aspects of history and reality that make everything so believable, and written with such detail and clarity that often one forgets it is all just a fictional tale. To make something of that caliber, and so many cases too, I cannot help but be more than amazed at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He gives both Sherlock and Watson, and even minor characters, each their own unique and individual personalities that set them apart in each novel, yet you see recurring minor characters display their old personalities so well even though their appearances in the novels are sporadic and not always consistent.
At the end of it all, this novel on Sherlock Holmes is not just an enjoyable read, it is also funny and educational. Many times throughout reading this book, I found myself laughing at the funny ways Sherlock reacted to something, or how he went about solving or explaining something. Watson and his reactions and commentaries were also interesting to see and visualize.
I am definitely looking forward to getting Volume 2, and reading more of Sherlock and Watsons’ adventures.