Dear reader, life is too short for crap books.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Laudanum is a Hell of a Drug: Drood by Dan Simmons


Drood by Dan Simmons

When I've been telling people about this book over the past few weeks, it usually goes something along the lines of, "Oh my god, it's about Charles Dickens and a train wreck and mesmerism and Egyptian death cults and this shadowy, nefarious creature named Drood, and the whole thing is narrated by an unhinged, laudanum-addicted Wilkie Collins! It's great!"

The weird thing is, people seem intrigued. Either that, or my slightly manic pitch just unnerves them enough to nod their heads and smile so I'll settle down. But I'm inclined to go with the former. After all, Drood's premise is pretty irresistible.

Simmons extrapolates a fantastic and, at times, very frightening tale from true events in the lives of Charles Dickens and his friend, Wilkie Collins, particularly Dickens's last years. On June 9, 1865, Dickens was riding by rail with his young mistress Ellen Ternan and her mother when their train crashed horrifically, killing 10 and injuring 40. After the crash, Dickens's writing fell off dramatically, his health suffered, and he spent much of his last five years giving strenuous reading tours in Great Britain and the United States.

Those are the facts, but Simmons introduces a sinister figure whose presence in the story gives a dark, eerie cast to Dickens's final years. This is Drood, whom Dickens first meets in the aftermath of the Staplehurst crash. Along with Dickens, Drood is seen giving aid to the wounded... or perhaps not. Afterward, Dickens becomes obsessed with Drood, venturing into London's darkest corners, sewers, crypts, opium dens, pursuing danger, courting death, and more often than not, dragging along his good friend, Wilkie Collins.

Though lesser known, Collins was a writer and frequent collaborator of Dickens's (and his two masterpieces, The Lady in White and The Moonstone have experienced a resurgence in popularity in recent years). Collins flouted convention, living openly with one mistress, while fathering three children with another. He also suffered from a number of health problems, which he self-medicated with huge amounts of laudanum. A tincture of opium meant to be ingested a few drops at a time, Collins drank the stuff by the glassful, which sometimes resulted in hallucinations (Collins claimed he saw, among other things, recurring visions of his own double as well as a green-skinned woman with tusks).

In the genius stroke of the novel, Simmons makes this hallucinating, drug-addled, perpetual second fiddle the story's narrator. Jealous, paranoid, and particularly susceptible to the dark allure of Drood, Collins is the perfect voice for this surreal story. As his confessions become more shocking, and Drood's endgame becomes clear, the reader gradually becomes aware of exactly how unreliable a narrator Collins really is. What's true about his tale and what's not? Simmons leaves that all maddeningly, deliciously up in the air.

At nearly 800 pages, Drood is something of an undertaking, but fear not. It's also packed with action, scandal, devilry, and what Brady likes to call high-grade nightmare fuel - 800 pages are rarely this much fun.

Also, I should mention that if this book sounds at all interesting to you, you might enjoy this episode of Doctor Who (a different, but somehow not all that different take on Dicken's last days).

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This sounds fantastic. Something that I'll have to add to my ever growing list of books to read.

Gorgo said...

Jeepers. Maybe I'll have to give Simmons another try. His fake Burke books were atrocious.

Heh. my word to identify is "stripper."

Anonymous said...

Ah, Dan Simmmons is great. He's best work is generally considered to be his science fictiion and horror.

The inspiration for the books you refer to, Gorgo (the Joe Kurtz series: HARDCASE, HARD FREEZE and HARD AS NAILS) are not Andrew Vachss's Burke novels but rather Richard Stark a.k.a. the recently deceased and much missed Donald E. Westlake and his novels of Parker, the professional thief. The first book is even dedicated to him.

Of the three I've only read HARDCASE and it seemed to accomplish the stripped down pulp feel it was going for. The Parker novels are in fact much better, but even Simmons would tell you that.

He writes in different styles depending on the needs of the novel so you should definitely try something else by him. DROOD sounds like a must read.

penguininpjs007 said...

this book was awesome . i read it in a little under three days. i literally couldnt put it down. i have walked the streets of whitechappel, bluegate fields and other streets mentioned, and so i could really get a feel for the context of the book. simons is a great novelist. my first contact with is work was through the horror novel "summer of night", from there i was hooked.

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