Number of Members: 14
Location: Southampton
We are a reading group of women aged between 40 and 80, most of who attend and are involved with the Immaculate Conception Church in Southampton. We are up for the Dickens Challenge, mostly because few of us have read many of his titles recently, or at all and some of us had torrid experiences of having to read Dickens at school!
Three of our group made a visit to Charles Dickens birthplace in Portsmouth recently. It is a fascinating house and at only £4 entrance fee, well worth the visit. It was an insight into how the family lived and the relative wealth they at that time must have enjoyed, but of course the family moved house many times as Mr Dickens senior incurred more and more debt. We saw the chaise longue that Dickens died on (if you believe that story) and the room he was born in.
From here we drove a short distance to Portsmouth City Museum where there is a fabulous free exhibition entitled A Tale of One City. Here we saw at first hand documents and are facts from Dickens’ time including some original pages from Nicholas Nickleby.
If you’re planning a visit then lunch/coffee can be partaken at The Tenth Hole on Southsea Parade, a lovely café which provides blankets and hot water bottles if you want to sit outside – oh and amazing hot chocolate too!
Tricia’s review of Dombey and Son
I collected the shiny black spined book and it quite quickly became a treasured possession to be loved and cherished. Although I took it to work to be read in my lunch break this rarely happened but it was transported as if it were a china tea set wrapped up carefully in my change of clothes and carried in my bicycle carrier. I am a bit partial to Penguin Classics and have a short row of black spines on one of my book shelves, the spines showing creases and marks of being in the held open position as most of them have been read.
Having only read Dickens from the end of 2010 when our book club chose A Tale of Two Cities I am a recent convert and now wonder how I have lived so long without him. I suppose I have read all of Thomas Hardy which is similar to Dickens in a rustic sort of way.
When I start a book I usually engage with the story fairly quickly and then I find it unputdownable. I think this happened with Dombey and Son in the first chapter and I found myself wanting to know more until it was finished. Consequently I got through it in about 15 days.
The plot twists and turns there are clues to the characters’ personalities. Mr Carker, who is Mr Dombey’s side kick, is given cat like qualities , the Victorian attitude to cats is not as it is today as none of the qualities are favourable. There is sadness in the loss of Paul Dombey which is moving and then the total rejection by Mr Dombey of his surviving child Florence, (it couldn’t be any different as the title of the book states). I was forever wanting to know if this relationship would change and how this would come about.
At times I could smell the sea and feel the breeze on my skin and hear the waves, the writing is full of imagery, with references to Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, religious themes and nautical terms. The plot moves on quickly so that each time I clocked up another hundred pages I couldn’t believe how much had happened and what was going to happen next.
To read Dombery and Son is to enter a Dickensian world of social comment on the times he lived including the role of the church, deaths and marriages, the coming of the railway and the plight of the poor. Family life is portrayed in the patriarchal Dombey household as priveleged but austere and cold, particularly towards the children. This is in contrast with the Tootle family who are poor but have many children but who are loved by their parents whose main wish is for their children to better themselves.
I would recommend this book to anyone who has never read a Dickens or who has been put off at school because they were forced to read it. It is a crackingly good story with laugh out loud bits, seriously sad bits and bits with the feel good factor particularly when the bad characters get their comeuppance. It is also as relevant today as it was when first published.
Our Dickens Champions
Watch out for our Dickens Champions’ blog posts as they read their way through Dickens during 2012.
Read Dickens Readng Group, Manchester’s thoughts on David Copperfield.
Read Belper Book Chat, Derbyshire’s thoughts on The Old Curiosity Shop.
Check out our Dickens Champions photos on Facebook.
Reading Dickens in your reading group or book club? Get in touch or post a comment to let us know how you’re getting on.
