Drood
On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, 53-year-old Charles Dickens--at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful novelist in the world and perhaps in the history of the world--hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever. Did Dickens begin living a dark double life after the accident? Were his nightly forays into the worst slums of London and his deepening obsession with corpses, crypts, murder, opium dens, the use of lime pits to dissolve bodies, and a hidden subterranean London mere research... or something more terrifying? Just as he did in The Terror, Dan Simmons draws impeccably from history to create a gloriously engaging and terrifying narrative. Based on the historical details of Charles Dickens's life and narrated by Wilkie Collins (Dickens's friend, frequent collaborator, and Salieri-style secret rival), Drood explores the still-unsolved mysteries of the famous author's last years and may provide the key to Dickens's final, unfinished work: The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Chilling, haunting, and utterly original, Drood is Dan Simmons at his powerful best.
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- The Hyperion Cantos is a masterpiece which every scifi fan ought to have read, but I would like to recommend a lesser known title of Simmons for readers who have read at least some works of Charles Dickens (self-explanatory) and Wilkie Collins (such as The Woman in White or The Moonstone).
Simmons wrote Drood (2009), which takes these two classical authors and places them in a mystery novel. What struck me as particularly masterful is that Simmons managed to write his prose in such a way that as a reader you soon forget that this book was not written in the 1800s — his tone and style match that of Dickens and Collins so convincingly.
- Related to Dickens and Collins: anyone who's read works by Dickens (who hasn't) and Collins (usually The Moonstone or The Woman in White) and would enjoy a fictional exploration of their relationship in a somewhat darker, rather macabre setting with Wilkie Collins as an unreliable (opium addicted) narrator might consider reading Dan Simmons' Drood (2009). I had the pleasure of reading it earlier this year.
While the premise is odd, Simmons succeeded in creating a work where it is easy to forget that he is not (by far) a contemporary of Dickens and Collins; his style and narrative in Drood are eerily close to how Collins (and his contemporaries) wrote.
Most readers will know Simmons from his lauded Hyperion Cantos. Drood though, is something else entirely, but impressive nonetheless.
- In fact, I discovered Wilkie Collins through (and thoroughly enjoyed) Drood; but now I find my Dickens is lacking and I need to explore beyond A Christmas Carol. But reading Dan Simmons is a delight, whether it’s Hyperion, or his Stephen King-esque works, or my favourite, The Terror, which is something else again.
- I was going to recommend Drood and am not surprised someone beat me to it. I love a number of Simmons books but was going to skip Drood because I didn't really enjoy the Dickens I read in school but a relative convinced me to give the book a shot and it was well worth it!
For anyone who likes Drood, Simmons has many other excellent novels worth checking out. In addition to the ones already mentioned to others I really enjoyed Illium (scifi take on the Illiad) and The Crook Factory, which is based on a true story about Ernest Hemmingway running a spy ring in Cuba during WW2. He uses actually historical documents in the story which is pretty neat.
- Dan Simmons’ novel “Drood”, a very fictional account of the relationship between Willkie Collins and Charles Dickens. A fascinating true item I learned from the novel was that Willkie Collins was addicted to laudanum and for many years hallucinated his doppelgänger whom he called ‘ghost Willkie’.
- Drood was a fascinating read, and was my first exposure to Wilkie Collins. Reading Drood is the reason I have a copy of The Moonstone on my shelf waiting to be read at this very moment.
