Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva (FIC Sil)

His wife is upstairs in the throes of childbirth (their sixth child) when Charles Dickens receives his publishers.  Somewhat taken aback by the sounds coming from above them, they never-the-less deliver the bad news:  Dickens' latest book, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, is a dismal failure.  The publishers are threatening to invoke a clause in his contract which would force Dickens to pay them a monthly fee.  UNLESS Dickens can produce a book about Christmas by the week before.  It doesn't have to be a big book, a novella will do just fine.

Dickens finds himself faced with financial ruin (why is it that everyone in his family from his wife to his children to his father to his brother thinks that he is a bottomless money pit?).  And then there's the toy store owner to which his children drag him.  And all the street urchins, whose cause he has championed.  How can he admit that his funds are so low he can't even give them a farthing?

And then there's the disdain of his writing peers.  It can't be true that William Thackeray is more popular than Dickens?  That Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins hold him in less than high regard?  

When his wife leaves him in anger to visit her family in Scotland, Dickens is left to find his way through his anger and despair and the writers' block that has him, well, blocked.  His deadline is approaching and all he can think about is how much everyone has taken advantage of him.  Hardly the best of moods to be in to write a book about Christmas.

And then one night, while walking his way through London, he meets Eleanor Lovejoy.  Lovely and thoughtful, calm and peaceful, she becomes his muse and just maybe the way through his funk.

I don't know how much truth there is in this work of fiction but I found it completely delightful.  Dickens is engaging and personable with a personality larger than life.  I wanted to meet him and hang out with him as, according to this version of his life, did all of London.  So much did I like Dickens that I found myself thinking about actually reading one of his books.  Well, maybe not...

Click for availability.