Scan barcode
A review by ladybedivere
The Haunting of Charles Dickens by Lewis Buzbee, Greg Ruth
3.0
Meg's brother Orion is missing. On a midnight rooftop escapade she runs into Charles Dickens, a family friend and fellow insomniac. They witness a fake seance, which leads them to believe that Orion may be prisoner somewhere and it is up to them to find and free him. With the help of the rest of Meg's family and a sundry cast of worthy Victorian characatures, they set out on a quest to bring him home.
Quite a good book for what it is. I sense that it's well-suited to the upper-middle-grade/youngish-young-adult set (thought having always been super ahead of my age in reading level I don't necessarily have the best perspective of what that actually is). But it's well written, has a strong female protagonist, and a great family dynamic that I really enjoyed. It's true to the period without being graphic or inappropriate, and it conjures up the world and style of Dickens himself nicely for kids/teens who may not be quite ready to bite off the Great Man himself.
My quibble with the book comes from the way it conjures up Dickens; I constantly felt like it was trying so hard to be clever that it undercut the very things that it was doing so well. My two main issues were:
1. The author very specifically sets this book after the publication of Great Expectations and before the publication of his next novel (his attempt to find inspiration for it forming some of the plot, hence, the spoiler tag). The MC, Meg, has explicitly read all of Dickens' published work. So, when Meg and Dickens start running into characters who are named after (and essentially ARE) the characters from Dickens' novels (a workhouse master named Mr. Bumble, a thug named Bill Sykes, etc.), I found it incredibly distracting that they didn't comment on it. Some of the characatures were more subtle, and alluded to Dickens' work without sharing names, and those were great. I wished that had been the convention all, the way through.
2. Early on, Dickens and Meg meet a genuine ghost, who provides Dickens with some inspiration for his next novel. He comments that "A ghost can ruin any novel, if it's a ghost simply to have a ghost. A ghost must be the ghost, must have a purpose beyond haunting." I love that statement as it applies to both craft and intent in the art of writing. And then I felt like this novel almost broke that rule, because the ghost never came up again, and nothing else supernatural happened.
Those two mini-rants aside, I did enjoy the book, and I would gladly recommend it as a gateway to Dickens/Victorian literature for younger readers.
Quite a good book for what it is. I sense that it's well-suited to the upper-middle-grade/youngish-young-adult set (thought having always been super ahead of my age in reading level I don't necessarily have the best perspective of what that actually is). But it's well written, has a strong female protagonist, and a great family dynamic that I really enjoyed. It's true to the period without being graphic or inappropriate, and it conjures up the world and style of Dickens himself nicely for kids/teens who may not be quite ready to bite off the Great Man himself.
My quibble with the book comes from the way it conjures up Dickens; I constantly felt like it was trying so hard to be clever that it undercut the very things that it was doing so well. My two main issues were:
Spoiler
1. The author very specifically sets this book after the publication of Great Expectations and before the publication of his next novel (his attempt to find inspiration for it forming some of the plot, hence, the spoiler tag). The MC, Meg, has explicitly read all of Dickens' published work. So, when Meg and Dickens start running into characters who are named after (and essentially ARE) the characters from Dickens' novels (a workhouse master named Mr. Bumble, a thug named Bill Sykes, etc.), I found it incredibly distracting that they didn't comment on it. Some of the characatures were more subtle, and alluded to Dickens' work without sharing names, and those were great. I wished that had been the convention all, the way through.
2. Early on, Dickens and Meg meet a genuine ghost, who provides Dickens with some inspiration for his next novel. He comments that "A ghost can ruin any novel, if it's a ghost simply to have a ghost. A ghost must be the ghost, must have a purpose beyond haunting." I love that statement as it applies to both craft and intent in the art of writing. And then I felt like this novel almost broke that rule, because the ghost never came up again, and nothing else supernatural happened.
Those two mini-rants aside, I did enjoy the book, and I would gladly recommend it as a gateway to Dickens/Victorian literature for younger readers.