Great Expectations

The novel Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, plays a role in The Angel’s Game, which prompted me to re-read it.  What a delight!  That Charles Dickens really knows how to spin a yarn!  It was pure pleasure to spend time with Pip, Miss Havisham,  Estella and Joe.  And speaking of Dickens, if you are a fan (and who isn’t) you may enjoy the creepy, gothic tale about Dickens and Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White is on my list of all time favs), Drood, by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown, 2009).  The story opens with a real event from Dicken’s life – his near death when a train on which he was riding jumped the track.  Dickens confides in Collins that a spectral presence named Drood appeared to aid (or perhaps kill) the survivors.  Dickens becomes enthralled with solving the mystery of Drood (Dicken’s last and unfinished novel is The Mystery of Edwin Drood) and pulls Collins into his investigation.  Library Journal said it best

“This sprawling monster of a novel is Collins-like in its exotic extravagance, Dickensian in its sharply delineated characters, major and minor.  Simmons has captured to a tee the high style of late Victorian melodrama: the story line is consistently engrossing and utterly unpredictable.  This rip-roaring adventure is a true page turner.”

Couldn’t agree more.