With the publication of A Christmas Carol in 1843, Dickens created an instant classic which has had an incalculable impact on our culture. The story has been known, loved, hated, retold, and parodied countless time in countless mediums since then, but rereading the original is always an enjoyable experience.The success of his little book inspired him to publish similar novellas each Christmas for the next four years, so they are often lumped together as Dickens's Christmas Books, though only one other is expressly about Christmas. I had never read these others, so I figured Christmas would be a good time to read them (yes, I am behind). General impressions:
1) Dickens's love of the stage is clear in the construction of these stories. A five-act structure is explicitly outlined in A Christmas Carol, and the other stories are eminently stageable with a restricted setting, a contained timeline, and a pointed (sometimes obvious) plot.
2) Though each story has its own focus, they all examine the beliefs and attitudes that lead people either to love and charity or to cold individualism. Sometimes the relationships are restricted to a family, like in The Cricket On the Hearth or The Battle of Life, while others aim for a more generalized love of mankind, like A Christmas Carol and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain.
3) Dickens's default tool to elicit (or wring) love and charity from his readers is the waif. Between the five books, the waif count was somewhere around nine or ten. Truth be told, the books with more waifs are stronger -- A Christmas Carol would be seriously lacking without Tiny Tim. I cannot repress tears every time I read those scenes, no matter how hard I try. The waifs are possibly the primary redeeming element of the scattered, unfocused The Chimes.
While I can't make the case these are all lost classics unjustly overshadowed by their famous predecessor, each of the other four books is worth a read. Perhaps The Haunted Man is the strongest, with its examination of the role of suffering through the peculiar "gift" given to its lead character, while The Battle of Life is easily the weakest with its overwrought and unnecessary sisterly sacrifice, but each has something unique to offer.
Arbitrary rating: 4 out of 5 pitiful waifs
The Life of Our Lord: As Written for His Children (Dickens, 1849)
This highly personal document, which Dickens refused to publish during his or his children's lifetimes, was finally brought to the reading public by his grandchildren in the early 1900s. Quite simply, it is Dickens telling his kids the story of Jesus. The simple voice of a dad comes through these pages, rather than the witty, important author. It was an enjoyable read, and I got to pull out my Bible a few times and fact check -- there were some things I had completely forgotten about, but sure enough, Luke or John had the story too. It can be tempting for authors to re-imagine and embellish, but there is very little of that here, just a plain retelling of the Gospels, with some explanatory glosses for the kids. The only rough spot - Dickens explains "Son of God" to mean that Jesus was such a good man that God considered him his son. I guess Dickens isn't the first Christian to stumble over the person of Jesus, and he won't be the last. That opening stumble had me worried for the end, but Dickens relates the death and resurrection faithfully. A good read for those interested in who Dickens was and what he believed.Arbitrary rating: 3.5 out of 5 loving dads
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