Friday, December 21, 2012

GREAT EXPECTATIONS : THE SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS
by Robert Gottlieb

Charles Dickens was the "father" of ten children. I placed quotes around father because he really wasn't much of one. He loved them when they were young but as they got older, his interest dissipated. Dickens was an even worse husband to his long-suffering wife leaving her for a much younger woman.
Great Expectations is set up in two parts. The first section describes the lives of the children (in chronological order) while Dickens was alive while the second part is after Dickens died.
I never got to the second part because I became very annoyed with one of the chapters talking about Henry Fielding Dickens who was the eighth child and the sixth son. What bothered me was the ricocheting of the names Henry and Harry. The first paragraph said Henry and the next said Harry. When I first read the name Harry, I didn't know who it referred to. I thought perhaps that it was another son or a friend. Nowhere in the entire chapter does the author explain Harry. If he was known as Harry and it was said so early on, no problem, but it wasn't. I found it to be very poor editing which is very surprising since Robert Gottlieb was the editor of The New York Review of Books for many years. There were other problems with the book and I just lost interest.
A much better biography on Charles Dickens and his family written by Claire Tomalin is the one to read.
Not recommended.