Word: dickensian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tale was suggested by John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, is convinced that a heroic destiny awaits him. How he attains that improbable yet inspirational end, through a chain of mix-ups, mishaps and coincidences of the kind only a perversely playful God (or a writer of Dickensian boldness) could ordain, makes Simon Birch a curiously entrancing, quite unexpected treat...
REVEALED. The identity of HELEN CATHCART, elusive royal biographer; following the death of her loyal assistant HAROLD ALBERT; in Midhurst, England. Cathcart, it turns out, was really Albert--clothed in literary drag to woo his predominantly female readership. Albert educated himself by reading, escaping a Dickensian childhood--absent father, reviled stepfather--to write Her Majesty, Prince Charles and other genteel accounts of royal life...
...upper-middle class and those who would join it. Nuts in May (1975) is a drolly unfair comedy about two educated twits on a camping holiday, seeking to be at one with nature and above base humanity. Who's Who (1978) turns a stockbroker into a toady of Dickensian breadth...
...novels have been called Dickensian, largely on the basis of the first one, which is jammed with plot and characters and ends with the cliff-hanger of Annelies' legal kidnapping. But as the series continues, Minke's adventures--he becomes a journalist and publishes a successful newspaper in opposition to the Dutch rule--serve almost entirely as the framework for an endless series of questing dialogues. Sourly or hopefully, with colleagues or adversaries, Minke explores the nature of colonialism and capitalism, the psychology of police power, the role of women, the techniques of political organization, the efficacy of boycotts...
What this introductory execution has to do with the Limehouse murders is, essentially, the question and plot of the novel. Unfortunately, this malange of fiction and fact is longer on intellectual pleasures than emotional resonance. Ackroyd has Dickensian ambitions and tries to show a city full of interlocking coincidences leading inexorably to tragedy. He does so with considerable skill but untimely haste. The intricacies of his plot seem ultimately to trace vectors rather than lives...