"This is why we love Dickens; why today, when many of the social issues this book discusses have become history, he is still among the most popular authors of all time. We love Dickens because he tells us that things happen for a reason, that chance encounters mean everything, that we are all -- rich or poor, good or evil -- bound up in the plots of each other's lives. We love Dickens because he tells us that life is funny, and cruel, often both at the same time. We love Dickens because he tells us the truth, when the dominant strand of contemporary postmodern literature so often tells us that there is no truth. And there isn't, perhaps, not that can be put into words. Truth, at least complete truth, isn't held in words. But there would be no truth at all without them. It lies behind them and lurks around them and shines through them, in glimpses of metaphor, and connotation, and story.
"We love Dickens because he tells us stories, and because he tells us that we are all stories. We are. We are more than stories, of course. But we have to start somewhere. And there are many worse places to start than, 'Chapter One. I am Born. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.'"
--H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, Chapter XXII
This delightful fantasy novel plays with the ways that literature erupts into and transforms our lives. As the title and the passage above suggest, Dickens and his works in particular show up in all kinds of expected and unexpected ways. It's my favorite book of 2019 so far, and I highly recommend it to everyone, but especially to fellow Dickensians!
I was able to get this from our local library. I rarely read fiction other than Dickens and a handful of other classics. This book is a fun read!
Posted by: Steven Willing | July 06, 2020 at 01:54 PM