If you are a lover of Victorian literature, Drood is a novel
not to be missed. The year is 1865. Charles Dickens is at the top of his career
and is secretly traveling with his mistress, Ellen Ternan and her mother by
train to London. The train engineer
suddenly sees with horror that the tracks ahead over a river have been removed
for repair and the warning signalman is too close to give them adequate time to
stop. The train continues off the tracks
and into the river below. Dickens was in the only 1st class car that
didn’t smash into the river. He becomes
a hero by rescuing many people in a horrific scene, but also meets the
mysterious man Drood that seemingly takes the lives of the people he reaches.
Dickens is forever changed by this incident and it haunts
him for the rest of his life, until his death five years to the date after the
accident. Dickens narrates the tale of
the horror of accident and his meeting with Drood to his good friend and
collaborator, Wilkie Collins. Together
they journey to the Drood’s lair in the sewers deep beneath London. After this secret meeting, Wilkie Collins
chronicles Dickens and his own obsession with Drood and descent into
madness. During this time period Collins
wrote his most famous novel, The Moonstone, and the Dickens started work on his
last unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Drood is written as narrated by Wilkie Collins writing it as
a Victorian memoir to be read 125 years after his death. This
narration is brilliant. Collins is
addicted to drugs and finds himself slipping further and further into his
addiction as the novel proceeds. He is
an unreliable narrator which puts a great twist on the novel. Are the events real or are they the twisted
imaginings of an opium addict? While
being friends with Dickens, Collins also had a great jealousy of him. While his novels, A Woman in White and The
Moonstone have more readers than Dickens’ novels during the same era, Dickens
is by far the more famous personality with much more critical acclaim. I
loved in the narration when Collins used terms like “Dear Reader” that one
would see in a Victorian novel.
Drood was a wonderful historical fiction novel that also
combines great elements of mystery, suspense, and horror. I finished the book yesterday and I’m still
thinking about the ending. The history
in it was great. I just read Jane Smiley’s
biography of Charles Dickens in December and this book dovetailed nicely with
the facts I know about Dickens and Wilkie Collins. The description really set the mood for one
to believe that you were in Victorian England.
It was also great to have another view on how The Moonstone and The
Mystery of Edwin Drood could have been inspired.
Both Dickens and Collins were represented as great fully released
three-dimensional characters. They both
had flaws, but were both creative geniuses.
They were definitely the power house characters in this book, but the
secondary characters were also wonderful including Dickens’ daughter (and
Collins’ sister-in-law) Katey Dickens Collins, Inspector Field, Detective
Hatchery and the mysterious villain Drood.
Drood is a very large novel (my version is 770 pages), but it
was a great meaty read and well worth the weeks I dedicated to reading it. The plot was tightly woven and the length was
needed to tell the entire story. Sadly it made it so I didn’t have enough time
to read Oliver Twist in February, but I hope to still read that novel as part
of the Victorian Challenge this year. We
read Drood as part of my Kewaunee Library book club, and I’ll admit that none
of us had it finished by the time we met, although we were all intrigued with
it.
I must admit I was most intrigued with the details of the
underground adventures of Dickens and Collins as they searched for Drood in the
sewers of London. It was an Indiana
Jones like adventure in a setting that intrigues me. I design sewers for a living so the history
of the crypts, sewers and sanitation in the Victorian era was very, very
interesting to me. Such quotes as “I may
have mentioned earlier that Joseph Bazalgette, chief engineer of the Board of
Works, had proposed a complex system of new sewers to drain off the sewage from
the Thames and to embank the mudflats along the shores.” I need to look this stuff up – I’m fascinated!
Overall, Drood is a novel not to be missed. It is a unique look at the Victorian period
of history during the last five years of Dickens life told through the opium
addicted author Wilkie Collins. This
book will definitely be one of my top books of this year.
Drood was not only my Kewaunee Library book club read, but I
also read it as part of the Victorian Challenge 2012 and Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2012.
Book Source: I won
this book in a giveaway two years ago.
