"Havisham" by Ronald Frame~The Whole Story!

SUMMARY :

IN THE TRADITION OF WIDE SARGASSO SEA, HAVISHAM IS THE ASTONISHING PRELUDE TO CHARLES DICKENS'S GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

Before she became the immortal and haunting Miss Havisham of Great Expectations, she was Catherine, a young woman with all of her dreams ahead of her. Spry, imperious, she is the daughter of a wealthy brewer. But she is never far from the smell of hops and the arresting letters on the brewhouse wall—HAVISHAM—a reminder of all she owes to the family name and the family business.

Sent by her father to stay with the Chadwycks, Catherine discovers elegant pastimes to remove the taint of her family's new money. But for all her growing sophistication, Catherine is anything but worldly, and when a charismatic stranger pays her attention, everything—her heart, her future, the very Havisham name—is vulnerable.

In Havisham, Ronald Frame unfurls the psychological trauma that made young Catherine into Miss Havisham and cursed her to a life alone, roaming the halls of the mansion in the tatters of the dress she wore for the wedding she was never to have.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK:

Published by: Picador
Pages:  368
Author:  Ronald Frame
Genre:  Historical Fiction
Purchase:  Barnes & Noble


ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Ronald Frame was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and educated there and at Oxford University. His novel The Lantern Bearers was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, named the Scottish Book of the Year, and cited by the American Library Association. He is also a dramatist and winner of the Samuel Beckett Award. Many of his original radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC. He lives outside Glasgow.

THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

"Havisham" is one of those books that starts off slowly and then builds to a crescendo as it moves along.  Written with the hand of a clear and clean storyteller, it flows inevitably, grabbing our interest as Miss Havisham grows aware of her own world and circumstances.

Ronald Frame is an author of strong imagination who is obviously well-acquainted with Dickens and his London.  While he doesn't seek to copy Dickens's style, he does keep to the rhythm of the times and the pace of the original story.

The easy characterization in this novel caused me to fall in love all over again with Miss Havisham.  Frame gives us the bones of her naivete, her delicate mind and nature; and her vulnerability to love.
What a venerable and unique subject she is for literature, and what a worthy job he does of describing her to us.  I've always loved her strange ways and delighted in France's exploration of her mysterious background.

This is a book for all fans of Dickens's Miss Havisham.  Those who have wondered what happened to shape her and what happened to cause her to ultimately live the bizarre and fatalistic way she did; seeking to warp and destroy the lives of innocent others.

I recommend this book but warn once again that while it's not written exactly in the style of Dickens, Mr. Frame has his own hand at storytelling that is unique.  His use of classical literary quotes sprinkled throughout makes the book seem both ethereal and beautifully timeless.  It is not by any means an ordinary historical fiction read.

4 stars                     Deborah/TheBookishDame

"Charles Dickens In Love" by Robert Garnett ~ New Biography

 

SUMMARY :

 

When Charles Dickens died in 1870 he was the best-known man in the English-speaking world—the pre-eminent Victorian celebrity, universally mourned as both a noble spirit and the greatest of novelists. Yet when the first person named in his will turned out to be an unknown woman named Ellen Ternan, only a handful of people had any idea who she was, and her conspicuous presence in his will was a mystery. Of his romance with Ellen, Dickens had written, “it belongs to my life and probably will only die out of the same with the proprietor,” and so it was—until his death she remained the most important person in his life.

She was not the first woman who had fired his imagination. As a young man he had fallen deeply in love with a woman who “pervaded every chink and crevice” of his mind for three years, Maria Beadnell,
and when she eventually jilted him he vowed that “I never can love any human creature breathing but yourself.” A few years later he was stunned by the sudden death of his young sister-in-law, Mary Scott Hogarth, and worshiped her memory for the rest of his life. “I solemnly believe that so perfect a creature never breathed,” he declared, and when he died over thirty years later he was still wearing her ring.

Charles Dickens has no rival as the most fertile creative imagination since William Shakespeare, and no one influenced his imagination more powerfully than these three women, his muses and teachers in the school of love. Using hundreds of primary sources, Charles Dickens in Love narrates the story of the most intense romances of Dickens’s life, and shows how his novels both testify to his own strongest affections and serve as memorials to the young women he loved all too well, if not always wisely.

PARTICULARS OF THE BOOK :
Published by:  Pegasus
Pages:  256
Genre:  Non-Fiction/Biography
Purchase:  Barnes & Noble


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Robert Garnett is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia
(Ph.D.), and currently Professor of English at Gettysburg College. He has been researching Dickens for over a dozen years, has presented papers on him at many academic conferences, and has published articles on his life and novels in scholarly journals such as Dickens Quarterly and Dickens Studies Annual.


THE BOOKISH DAME REVIEWS :

This is an all together very readable biographical study and chronicle about the love life of Charles Dickens.  It's comprehensive but not at all massive, doable and enjoyable to read.  I found it quite "user friendly," surprisingly enough.  A good read and an informative one.

Robert Garnett describes the main three loves of Dickens's life and their affects on him and his individual works, as well as his writings in total.  I felt many parts of the book were redundant, however, although not tiring to read. I wondered whether the book actually came from his teaching notes at times. But, basically, there are intimate sections that enhance the chapters on each of Dickens  muses/loved ones.  And, his relationships with famous writers of the times such as Wilke Collins, brought an added dimension I enjoyed reading about.

While I did not find it an extremely academic book, I was refreshed and relieved by that fact to an extent.  It is a book I can recommend to those who love Charles Dickens and would like to know more about this softer side of him and how his love of particular women, the central focus of his novels, came about.

A book I would recommend to Dickens lovers with the above reservations.

3.5 stars              Deborah/TheBookishDame



 

"Great Expectations"~Charles Dickens by way of PBS!

If I let go of your hand, will you promise not to forget to tune in to "Great Expectations" on PBS

tonight!?

Surely, Miss Haversham meant to send you and invitation...

First Episode Synopsis:

On a cold winter's day, an escaped convict accosts a young orphan, Pip, in the marshes, ordering the terrified boy to steal a file from his brother-in-law's forge so that he can remove his shackles. When Pip returns, he brings a piece of pie as well as the file: an innocent act of kindness that touches the filthy, battered man, who nevertheless is soon recaptured. Pip learned such kindness from his brother-in-law Joe, the only person who has ever treated him with tenderness, as his sister Mrs. Joe constantly abuses him and Joe's assistant, Orlick, menaces Pip for sport.

But when Pip is summoned to the grand but dilapidated Satis House by its reclusive owner Miss Havisham, he is subjected to fresh abuse in the form of humiliation by Miss Havisham's cold-hearted but beautiful adopted daughter, Estella. Pip desperately yearns for a match with Estella, in spite of Miss Havisham's inscrutable manipulations, but it's not until an anonymous benefactor bestows great expectations of status and wealth upon Pip that he dares to hope that Estella can be his. From the warmth of the forge, Pip journeys to London to pursue the life of a gentleman. But how far will he go for love?   

*Note:  Synopsis taken from PBS site re: "Great Expectations"

Estella (Younger)

Pip (Younger)

Jaggers

Do you need to bring your lawyer?

Now Watch This!!! 

Click here to find out more and get some actor insights into the relevance of Dickens to 2012:  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh


Now, I'm going to let go of your hand, and I hope I see you in the chair beside me when we go...we all have "great expectations."

Deborah/TheBookishDame