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A review by jwsg
The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl
3.0
I'd rather enjoyed Matthew Pearl's first novel - the Dante Club - way back in 2005 and thought that The Last Dickens would be a neat segue from the light fare I've been reading of late, back into the classics (Thackeray and Hardy here I come...).
The Last Dickens is a fictional account of the attempt by Dickens' American publishers to figure out the ending of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a novel that Dickens was working on when he passed away. But the publisher - Osgood - is thwarted at every turn; his clerk is murdered, Osgood himself is attacked and left for dead in a London sewer when pursuing the mystery of Drood. I can't remember the specifics of the Dante Club, but the impression of an inventive, fast-paced read, the more literary counterpart of the Da Vinci Code, lingers. The Last Dickens didn't leave as strong an impression, but overall, I did find it an entertaining read. What I especially loved about the novel was Pearl's blending of fact and fiction; the book is meticulously researched and references actual events and characters in Dickens' life, such as his tour of America, which drew hordes of Dickens fans (the novel even mentions a dinner in honour of Dickens in NYC's Delmonico's, which was also mentioned in Mark Kurlansky's The Big Oyster), James Osgood, and Fletcher "Major" Harper.
The Last Dickens is a fictional account of the attempt by Dickens' American publishers to figure out the ending of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, a novel that Dickens was working on when he passed away. But the publisher - Osgood - is thwarted at every turn; his clerk is murdered, Osgood himself is attacked and left for dead in a London sewer when pursuing the mystery of Drood. I can't remember the specifics of the Dante Club, but the impression of an inventive, fast-paced read, the more literary counterpart of the Da Vinci Code, lingers. The Last Dickens didn't leave as strong an impression, but overall, I did find it an entertaining read. What I especially loved about the novel was Pearl's blending of fact and fiction; the book is meticulously researched and references actual events and characters in Dickens' life, such as his tour of America, which drew hordes of Dickens fans (the novel even mentions a dinner in honour of Dickens in NYC's Delmonico's, which was also mentioned in Mark Kurlansky's The Big Oyster), James Osgood, and Fletcher "Major" Harper.