Today we have fiction and nonfiction both!
- Among the Fallen by Virginia Frances Schwartz (Holiday House, 2019). I adore this concept -- a Young Adult novel from the perspective of one of the young "fallen women" brought to Urania Cottage by Charles Dickens and Angela Burdett-Coutts to be rehabilitated. I adore it so much that I keep thinking "Why has someone never thought of this before? It was begging to be written!" So major kudos to Schwartz for writing it, and for researching it so well, and for exploring all sorts of different lives and responses among these young women. Kudos also for taking seriously what Dickens and Burdett-Coutts were trying to do, and how radical and important it was, without getting bogged down in 21st-century concepts of paternalism. At the same time, Schwartz's characters do demonstrate how difficult it was for many of the women and girls to make the changes demanded of them, and how resentful some of them might have felt to have their future, however promising, mapped out for them by someone else. And what she does particularly well is to point out how Dickens's own eventual "fallenness" cut him off from the house and how hard that might have been for the women -- and the double standard that allowed him to be "fallen" and still hold on to his place in society. Schwartz's heroine, Orpha, doesn't lose her gratitude and affection for the man who treated her kindly and encouraged her, but she can't help observing this fundamental difference between them.
My one complaint is that the book is written rather melodramatically. Before you say "So are Dickens's books," gentle reader, I will concede that he certainly has his melodramatic moments. But the melodrama here -- consisting of characters shrieking and yelling and whooping and dashing and sweeping where ordinary people would talk and walk -- distracts from and at times obscures the story. I do wish some of that could have been toned down for the sake of the narrative, but all the same, I still like and admire what Schwartz has done here, and recommend giving it a read. - Charles Dickens: Faith, Angels and the Poor by Keith Hooper (Lion Hudson, 2017). Most of you know by now my penchant for books about Dickens and religion, and Hooper's book is a worthy addition to that subgenre -- thorough, honest, and thoughtful. As the subtitle suggests, he places special emphasis on how Dickens's religious beliefs expressed themselves in his service to the poor. Even where I disagreed with Hooper, he gave me plenty to consider, and I appreciated his extensive research and his analysis.
(Today I've provided links to Bookshop. When you order from them, you can designate a local independent bookstore to receive 30 percent of the profit.)
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