After reading too many mediocre novels, I took a break from fiction for a few months to check out some other stuff (I highly recommend Craig Ferguson’s
American on Purpose
, by the way. Wow.), but I’m finally jumping back into it again. Starting with Charles Dickens was a risky move, but though essays like
American Notes
failed to grab me, I generally like his fiction. He rambles, but his wandering is always funny, descriptive, and entertaining, so I have a lot of patience with him. Rather than begin with something that I’ve read before – or even seen adapted for the screen – I picked
Barnaby Rudge
, which I knew nothing about.
My edition is from
The Oxford Illustrated Dickens
and I think I’ve now learned my lesson about reading the introductions to these volumes. Rather than tease you about what’s coming up, the Oxford intros tend to be full critiques with lots of spoilers. They’d make a lot better afterwords, so from now on I’ll put off reading them until I’ve finished the rest of the book. But in spite of my sort of knowing where the story is headed, I’m still very interested in getting there after reading the hundredth page.
There are a lot of characters to keep straight, but Dickens makes it pretty easy and he’s built a nice mystery to get us through the introductions. There’s a fabulous old mansion that’s been converted into a roadside inn and the book opens there with a couple of mysterious strangers who hurry away into the night. One is a handsome, well-dressed, young man; the other is a rough, dangerous scoundrel who prefers to keep his face hidden. As the young man rushes off to some romantic
rendezvous, the inn’s patrons tell the other stranger a tale about another mansion nearby and the horrible murders that occurred there long ago. For some reason, this spurs the second stranger to action and he rushes off.
Love, violence, and mystery after the break.