Standing O.

This month I’ve been catching up with the residents of Cedar Cove, Washington. It’s light reading and feels like I’ve been visiting with old friends. Debbie Macomber, in my opinion, is a throw back writer who makes reading flow without having to think about it. Fun for a change of pace. And my brain certainly appreciates the respite whilst finishing-up with Dan Simmons’ Drood. (I love reading more than one book at a time. Doesn’t everyone?)

Actually I can’t even imagine Macomber and Simmons in the same room let alone on the same page, but there you have it. A light and airy read vs. one that requires a Degree in English to understand (if you are not familiar with Charles Dickens’ life off the page, you may not appreciate this book. Understand it? Yes. Appreciate it? No).

I’ve been reading Drood, a fictional (or is he?) character that came into Dickens’ life during the last five years of it. They met, so to speak, in the midst of the rubble of the Staplehurst train crash when Charles Dickens had something to hide. And Drood?.....well, let’s not spoil it shall we?

Charles Dickens himself began writing about this mysterious encounter in his last unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and Dan Simmons picked-up the torch and ran with it in his novel, Drood.

There are only a select few who actually knew about that time in Dickens’ life, and Wilkie Collins was one of them. Collins was a close friend, collaborator and fellow writer, who, given to the delusions of opium, defines the last five years of Dickens’ life, as the narrator in Simmons’ book, Drood.

I love how Simmons writes in the Victorian style blending historical fact with fiction in such a seamless manner that the reader forgets he’s reading. And the unheard banter between Collins and Dickens gives the reader the impression that there is something more going on than the story.

Simmons is genius bordering on madness, and I stand-up to applaud. *****


1824-1889
Wilkie Collins



1812-1870
Charles Dickens