The Last Dickens, by Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club and The Poe Shadow, has lots of very promising elements. I like literary mysteries, unlikely heroes, Charles Dickens, and stories filled with interesting historical details. London (my favorite city in the world) and Boston (right up there on my list of favorites) are perfect settings for such stories. The protagonist, Boston book publisher James Ripley Osgood, is a historical person and very unlikely hero who interacts with a mixed cast of historical and fictional characters in a story that mixes historical and fictional events. Perfect, right?
The story is a mystery about a mystery: it posits that Dickens’s last, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, is a thinly-disguised fictionalization of the story of an actual young man from the neighborhood of Dickens’s country home. But Dickens has died with the novel only half-finished, and Osgood, partner in a struggling Boston publishing firm that is Dickens’s authorized American publisher, must try to find any additional manuscript pages Dickens might have finished before he died. The lack of international copyright laws means that whoever gets their hands on any pages first can publish them and make a fortune for their firm. Osgood has to contend with dangers that range from annoying to life-threatening from other folks who want to beat him to the manuscript (which may or may not exist).
But, from beginning to end, The Last Dickens remains an idea with great potential that suffers in the execution. I found the structure of the story, which shifts from the “present” in which Dickens has just died to a recent past in which he is touring America for the last time, difficult to follow (and what is the India thing with Dickens’s son doing popping in and out of the narrative?).
Osgood is a decent guy, if a bit stiff, but I didn’t find him believable as the semi-action hero Pearl tries to turn him into toward the end. The other characters should be interesting, but come off flat or exaggerated – and they all kinda talk the same. The insights into the cutthroat world of publishing in the latter half of the 19th century are interesting, but the main publisher-villain and the main opium-trade-villain both pretty much talk us to death. The prose is in need of an editor with a ruthless attitude toward adverbs and extraneous words, and who will whisper sweet nothings in the author’s ear like, “Show, don’t tell.”
It should have been a good story, but when I put it down it never drew me back with that irresistible desire to find out what happens next. By about the halfway point, I was reading to get it over with–while still hoping it might get better. It’s always disappointing to find a promising premise that doesn’t manage to deliver. Reading this book was like being a die-hard baseball fan whose team just can’t put together a win. I kept rooting for the story to make a base hit, even when all hope was lost.
Pearl does throw in a lot of Boston and London atmosphere and interesting historical details (like the description of the “moving parlor” elevator in a Boston building), but too often the detail interferes with the story. For instance, the murderous bad guy is literally on Osgood’s heels when Osgood enters the moving parlor in an effort to escape him. The action stops dead as we learn about the interesting elevator; once it picks up again, the momentum is gone.
Read the book for its historical details--many quite fascinating--about 19th century Boston, London, Kent, the publishing industry, Dickens, and travel. But don’t expect a page-turner that will keep you up past your bedtime.
Links to some other reviews:
New York Times
Boston Globe
Christian Science Monitor
Washington Post
The story is a mystery about a mystery: it posits that Dickens’s last, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, is a thinly-disguised fictionalization of the story of an actual young man from the neighborhood of Dickens’s country home. But Dickens has died with the novel only half-finished, and Osgood, partner in a struggling Boston publishing firm that is Dickens’s authorized American publisher, must try to find any additional manuscript pages Dickens might have finished before he died. The lack of international copyright laws means that whoever gets their hands on any pages first can publish them and make a fortune for their firm. Osgood has to contend with dangers that range from annoying to life-threatening from other folks who want to beat him to the manuscript (which may or may not exist).
But, from beginning to end, The Last Dickens remains an idea with great potential that suffers in the execution. I found the structure of the story, which shifts from the “present” in which Dickens has just died to a recent past in which he is touring America for the last time, difficult to follow (and what is the India thing with Dickens’s son doing popping in and out of the narrative?).
Osgood is a decent guy, if a bit stiff, but I didn’t find him believable as the semi-action hero Pearl tries to turn him into toward the end. The other characters should be interesting, but come off flat or exaggerated – and they all kinda talk the same. The insights into the cutthroat world of publishing in the latter half of the 19th century are interesting, but the main publisher-villain and the main opium-trade-villain both pretty much talk us to death. The prose is in need of an editor with a ruthless attitude toward adverbs and extraneous words, and who will whisper sweet nothings in the author’s ear like, “Show, don’t tell.”
It should have been a good story, but when I put it down it never drew me back with that irresistible desire to find out what happens next. By about the halfway point, I was reading to get it over with–while still hoping it might get better. It’s always disappointing to find a promising premise that doesn’t manage to deliver. Reading this book was like being a die-hard baseball fan whose team just can’t put together a win. I kept rooting for the story to make a base hit, even when all hope was lost.
Pearl does throw in a lot of Boston and London atmosphere and interesting historical details (like the description of the “moving parlor” elevator in a Boston building), but too often the detail interferes with the story. For instance, the murderous bad guy is literally on Osgood’s heels when Osgood enters the moving parlor in an effort to escape him. The action stops dead as we learn about the interesting elevator; once it picks up again, the momentum is gone.
Read the book for its historical details--many quite fascinating--about 19th century Boston, London, Kent, the publishing industry, Dickens, and travel. But don’t expect a page-turner that will keep you up past your bedtime.
Links to some other reviews:
New York Times
Boston Globe
Christian Science Monitor
Washington Post
Thanks for reading my book and travel blog!
Annette
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