Helpful Score: 6
The plot of this novel is incredibly complex, so I'll only touch upon it briefly. It deals with the last five years of Charles Dickens's life, and is narrated by his friend and sometime collaborator, Wilkie Collins. The story begins on the ninth of June, eighteen sixty-five, when Dickens is involved in a train accident. He later relates to Collins that he saw a sinister figure moving amongst the injured passengers. He names the character Drood. Collins is at first skeptical, knowing his friend to be the creative sort. But as events coalesce, Drood begins to infringe more and more into the lives of both men, and Collins begins to doubt his original skepticism.
I thought this book was great for a couple of different reasons. First and foremost, Collins is an unreliable narrator to the extreme. From the outset of the book, he freely admits to be addicted to laudanum, which he uses as a painkiller for his rheumatic gout. As the book progresses, he becomes addicted to both pure opium and morphine. It's also historically documented that Collins was prone to see visions, and Simmons uses this to build a strong case that our narrator doesn't grasp reality as well as he himself thinks. Thirdly, Collins is a habitual prevaricator, telling lies to almost every character in the novel at whim. Who's to say that the entire novel is not another of Wilkie Collin's lies just told on a grander scale?
I also loved how Simmons shows the deterioration of Dickens and Collins's relationship. In the beginning of the book, they're very close friends, truly enjoying each other's company. But, by the time Dickens passes away, the two men have fallen out quite bitterly, sniping at each other's work. This relationship is the true heart of the novel in my mind.
Simmons is a writer's writer in the truest sense. HYPERION, his most famous work to date, was a space opera structured like the Canterbury Tales and has tinges of Nordic legend. His books ILLIUM and OLYMPOS pay homage to Shakespeare and Proust against a backdrop of Homer's Greek mythology. So it doesn't come as much of a surprise that he decided to write a story about Dickens. The sheer audacity of the story, though, with its mixture of intrigue, squalor, Egyptian mythology, and deception makes the story a riveting read. And it's also interesting to see all of the commentary he's able to slip in about the work of these two literary contemporaries. That audacity is what I'll probably remember most in a year.
Now, DROOD is, without a doubt, a doorstop. But the story is absolutely worth the seven hundred plus pages it fills. I'd recommend this book to those who enjoy a good thriller set in a Victorian backdrop. You'll definitely get your credit's worth.
I thought this book was great for a couple of different reasons. First and foremost, Collins is an unreliable narrator to the extreme. From the outset of the book, he freely admits to be addicted to laudanum, which he uses as a painkiller for his rheumatic gout. As the book progresses, he becomes addicted to both pure opium and morphine. It's also historically documented that Collins was prone to see visions, and Simmons uses this to build a strong case that our narrator doesn't grasp reality as well as he himself thinks. Thirdly, Collins is a habitual prevaricator, telling lies to almost every character in the novel at whim. Who's to say that the entire novel is not another of Wilkie Collin's lies just told on a grander scale?
I also loved how Simmons shows the deterioration of Dickens and Collins's relationship. In the beginning of the book, they're very close friends, truly enjoying each other's company. But, by the time Dickens passes away, the two men have fallen out quite bitterly, sniping at each other's work. This relationship is the true heart of the novel in my mind.
Simmons is a writer's writer in the truest sense. HYPERION, his most famous work to date, was a space opera structured like the Canterbury Tales and has tinges of Nordic legend. His books ILLIUM and OLYMPOS pay homage to Shakespeare and Proust against a backdrop of Homer's Greek mythology. So it doesn't come as much of a surprise that he decided to write a story about Dickens. The sheer audacity of the story, though, with its mixture of intrigue, squalor, Egyptian mythology, and deception makes the story a riveting read. And it's also interesting to see all of the commentary he's able to slip in about the work of these two literary contemporaries. That audacity is what I'll probably remember most in a year.
Now, DROOD is, without a doubt, a doorstop. But the story is absolutely worth the seven hundred plus pages it fills. I'd recommend this book to those who enjoy a good thriller set in a Victorian backdrop. You'll definitely get your credit's worth.
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