Dickensblog

'A World Full of Dickens Stories': A review

By Tai French, guest blogger

A World Full of Dickens Stories: 8 Best-Loved Classic Tales Retold for Children by Angela McAllister (Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2020)

The works of Charles Dickens, though marvelous, can be a tad daunting at first, especially for the young. With a dizzying array of characters, unfamiliar social mores and settings, and a wealth of subplots, a full-length Dickens novel can quickly overwhelm a novice or reluctant reader. Imagine how helpful a trusted guide could be, one who helps the reader keep track of the primary characters and follow the golden thread of the story through its twists and turns! A World Full of Dickens Stories is just such a faithful guide.

Steven Knight's next Dickens adaptation announced

The next Dickensian miniseries from the team behind the BBC/FX Christmas Carol will be . . . wait for it . . . Great Expectations. (It never seems to occur to anyone to give us a new Barnaby Rudge or Martin Chuzzlewit or Dombey and Son). Personally, I just hope it's a bit less grim than their previous outing. 

From the book pile

We'll start off this round of reviews with some fiction.

• A Tale of Two Murders and Grave Expectations by Heather Redmond (Kensington Books, 2019). For her "A Dickens of a Crime" series, mystery author Redmond takes young journalist Charles Dickens as her detective, investigating crimes featuring plots and characters that will one day be repurposed for his novels. (The next installment, A Christmas Carol Murder, is due out in September.) Dickens investigates the strange cases that pop up around London with the help of the pretty and vivacious young Catherine Hogarth, along with his brother Fred and other characters, both real and fictional. Those who know Dickens's works well will enjoy the copious Dickensian Easter eggs scattered throughout these books; others may simply enjoy the mysteries and learn a few things about Dickens's life and world. (And if watching Charles and Catherine's relationship blossom makes your heart ache a little, well, my friend, you're not the only one.)
• Marley by Jon Clinch (Atria Books, 2019). Clinch is without question a fine writer, and one who clearly knows the original Christmas Carol forwards and backwards. He brings a prodigious imagination to bear on Dickens's characters and plotlines in writing this prequel, in which he takes the intriguing path of making Scrooge a good man who goes wrong through the noblest of motives -- trying to outwit and rein in his unabashedly crooked partner, Marley. The maneuverings and one-upmanship between the two men, and the other characters who get swept up in it all, make Marley a fascinating tale in its own right. And yet Clinch's almost unrelentingly bleak tone in this novel left a bitter aftertaste, with only the tiniest, almost imperceptible drop of hope to temper it. I was positively appalled by the fate he devised for Fan -- a fate not only cruel in itself, but one brought on by an unfathomably cruel ongoing deception of her. I can't deny Clinch's great creativity and skill -- but I can't help wishing they'd gone in a different direction. 

More reviews coming shortly! (Note: As Amazon is understandably tied up at the moment, I'll be linking to publishers' sites and other booksellers' sites instead for the foreseeable future.)

News roundup

Just wanted to share a few news items before beginning the book reviewing:

• The Dickens Museum is, unsurprisingly, closed indefinitely, but remains active on social media. Actor Dominic Gerrard, who has performed a one-man Christmas Carol there, has done a reading of the first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities to raise money for the Museum.
• The joint Dickens Fellowship/Dickens Society Symposium in London in July is still scheduled to go ahead, but organizers are monitoring things and will make a final decision in May.
• In the New Yorker, Amy Davidson Sorkin argues, "Esther Summerson is one of the great heroines of literature, in part because she understands the vital importance of social distancing and isolation, even when it is hard."
• Phyllis Rose is re-releasing her 1983 book Parallel Lives, which focuses on five Victorian couples, including Charles and Catherine Dickens. In an interview with the Guardian, Rose argues that "is disappointing, and incredibly small-minded" to "cancel" great writers like Dickens over their bad behavior. The new edition of her book can be ordered here.   
• The TV series "Great British Menu" has a children's literature theme this year, in honor of the 150th anniversary of Dickens's death. (Seemed like a bit of a stretch to me too, but apparently it has something to do with Oliver Twist being the first child protagonist. Anyway, I'd never carp about a show honoring Dickens for any reason!)
• Dr. Pete Orford is beginning a Hard Times readalong on April 1.

Big 'Tale of Two Cities' news!

If you were in the Dickensblog Facebook group or on Twitter today, you might have seen me celebrating the news that A Tale of Two Cities is finally, finally getting a TV adaptation, written by Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, His Dark Materials). As others pointed out to me, we've been burned before, but this time I choose to believe it's the real thing. It has to be the real thing sometime, right?

And I'm glad that it's not the team behind the BBC/FX Christmas Carol doing it. Although oddly enough, it struck me at the time that that team might actually do a better job with ATOTC, as there are already plenty of dark, ugly secrets in that story for them to dive into. Still, as you know, I found their work pretty bleak and depressing, and I'm hoping for better things from Thorne.

Feel free to use the comments section below for dreamcasting! :-) 

 

(P.S. Thorne also wrote the adaptation of Christmas Carol that just ran on Broadway. Somehow I missed that!!)

And the next 'Christmas Carol' will come from . . .

. . . Mark Gatiss (Doctor Who, Sherlock), who is adapting his "favorite story" for the London stage and plans to play Marley. "It’s an astonishingly powerful tale of life, love, loss and redemption and remains supremely relevant," Gatiss told The Guardian. "But at its heart it is a ghost story and that will be at the core of my new version."

More adaptations coming from Knight

The BBC and FX confirm that they're eager for more Dickens adaptations from Steven Knight, who penned the recent Christmas Carol. I can only say that I hope the forthcoming versions manage to be a little less grim and joyless. 

An angry 'Carol'

I shared some thoughts on the BBC/FX A Christmas Carol over at Christ and Pop Culture.

Meet Tiny Tim(s)

Jai Srinivasan and Sebestian Ortiz share a friendship, a diagnosis of cerebral palsy, and the role of Tiny Tim on Broadway. "NBC Nightly News" recently interviewed these two talented boys and their families. (The report is in two parts; the second part should start automatically after the first finishes.)

Charles Dickens, foodie

Columnist Rich Barlow argues that Dickens was "the greatest Christmas food writer of them all."