Our Dickens Champions the Mitchell Classics Group have been reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood, here’s Lauren’s review:
One of his best
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens’ last and unfinished novel, whilst not being as well-known or as well-read as many of his other works, should, I believe, be on everyone’s reading list. It is definitely darker in tone, particularly in regards to its depiction of opium use, and of the price that one pays for falling dependent to it. But to me, this novel I would argue is one of his best.
Dickens writes unflinching scenes of drug use, racism, hypocrisy, poverty, loneliness, and desolation of the soul and spirit, but he also writes of hope, of great faith against the odds, and of love, with often a bitingly sharp sense of humour. But love as a redeeming force also acts as a force of destruction. Jealousy, perhaps even murder, is the harvest of a twisted and warped love gone wrong.
In Cloisterham, where this novel takes place, among its residents you will meet: Rosa Bud and Edwin Drood, two young lovers betrothed as young children by their fathers; Neville and Helena Landless, orphan twins of Ceylon parentage; John Jasper, choirmaster and secret opium addict; Reverend Septimus Crisparkle, a saintly minor canon of Cloisterham cathedral; Mr. Luke Honeythunder, the hectoring and hypocritical philanthropist; Stony Durdles, an eccentric old stonemason and caretaker of the churchyard and crypt; and Princess Puffer, an opium dealer and addict.
On a dark night, past midnight, Edwin and Neville, formerly bitter enemies, go for a walk down by the river. The next morning, only one of them awakens in Cloisterham, the other having disappeared in the night. Murder is suspected, the hunt for the body, and the truth, begins.
I could have revealed the (burial) plot, but don’t you prefer to walk with me instead on into this dark, cloudless night, across the churchyard past the headstones, down into the unlonely crypt. Take this lantern and this key, and discover the mystery that awaits for you in the shadows to be disinterred.
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Read our Dickens Champions’ blog posts as they read and reviewed their way through Dickens during 2012.
