The Pickwick Papers by Charles Darwin

The Pickwick Papers is the rambling account of the adventures and misadventures of Samuel Pickwick, a supposedly learned man of independent means, and his feckless little band of well-to-do friends.  The action takes place around 1827 in London and its nearby counties.

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (to give it its proper title) is the first of Charles Dickens fifteen novels.  It was originally published in twenty installments during 1836-37.  As Dickens was writing and publishing it chapter by chapter, the early part of the novel has very little structure, being mostly a collection of tenuously linked vignettes.  It is not until second half of the book that some kind of story arc beings to develop, strands of narrative are pulled together, and farce, burlesque and genial buffoonery give way to a more considered exploration of characters and events.

Despite its defects, The Pickwick Papers is an enjoyable book.  This is mainly because of the proliferation of absolutely memorable characters that grace its pages.  Foremost amongst these is Sam Weller, who makes his appearance a quarter of the way into the novel.  A man of native cunning, Sam becomes a Sancho Panza to the unworldly Mr Pickwick's Don Quixote.  When the latter gets into strife, it is Sam who repeatedly comes to the rescue. Tony Weller, Sam's father, is no less memorable, and the banter between these two is hilarious and endearing.  Also in the mix are the idiosyncratic Alfred Jingle, a strolling actor and teller of tale tales, and his side-kick Job Trotter; and Dodson and Fogg, two opportunistic and highly questionable lawyers.

The Pickwick Papers is a long book, and its first quarter is of a mediocre quality (apart from the antics of Alfred Jingle);  however, if the one has patience enough to hang in there until the arrival of Sam Weller, it is well worth the effort.

Sam Weller was such a popular character with Dickens' contemporaries that people even began making their own Sam Weller jokes - Wellerisms as they are now known.  If they were not invented by Dickens,  they were certainly brought to the public's attention by him.  Here are a few:

'... out vith it, as the father said to the child, ven he swallowed a [farthing].’

 ‘Now, gen’l’men, “fall on,” as the English said to the French when they fixed [their bayonets].’

'Business first, pleasure arterwards, as King Richard the Third said ven he stabbed the t’other king in the Tower, afore he smothered the babbies.’

And I can't leave without mentioning the poem 'The Expiring Frog' by Mrs Leo Hunter.  Its an excruciating lancing of pompous parlour poetry.  Along with Sam Weller, this poem makes persevering with the book all the more worthwhile.

Dickens heavily revised The Pickwick Papers in 1847 and 1867.  I read the Penguin version of the book which is based on the 1937 edition - which is, more or less, what the original audience would have read - this is an interesting thing to experience, but I can't help wondering ...    

Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut

Look out!  Kurt's on one of his downers again.  What is it this time? I hear you ask.  Well, it's quite bizarre.

Vonnegut asks: why there is so much evil in the world?  His answer: because human brains are too big; otherwise, the world is 'a very innocent planet'.  This is not an original thought.  Remember when Hamlet said:

        ...for there is nothing either good or bad,
        but thinking makes it so...
           - Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.

What is original and bizarre is Vonnegut's solution to the problem of evil.  But what that solution is, I am not going to tell you. No spoilers here.

Galápagos was first published in 1985, and much of its action takes place in 1986. For one reason or another, a group of disparate people assemble in Ecuador to take 'the cruise of a lifetime' to the Galápagos Islands.  However, a world-wide financial crisis turns fiat currency into useless bits of coloured paper, and then things get nasty.

Vonnegut started his literary career by writing science fiction stories.  Later in his life, he took pains to distance himself from the tag of being a Sci-fi writer; yet Galápagos can be construed as a work of speculative fiction with fantasy elements.  The story is narrated by a ghost a million years in the future.  A personal hand-held device called Mandarax is spookily prescient of smartphones and search engines. There is fallout from the Hiroshima atom bomb, but not in the way you think, and it has enormous ramifications for the future of humankind; likewise, a metaphorical toss of the coin determines the future sanity of our race.

Galápagos is written in Vonnegut's seemingly effortless style.  The characters are well-drawn but oh-so-flawed, as we all are.  Each has opportunities for salvation, damnation or meek acquiescence to fate.  These elements are the strength of this novel.  One can but wonder at the overall outcome of the story.  We may well say: 'Kurt! Really?'

If you have read this book, or if you ever read it, then you may understand the applicability of another quote from Hamlet:

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. - Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2.

 Galápagos could well be Vonnegut's bad dream.

Mort by Terry Pratchett

Casting my mind back some thirty-odd years to a reading of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, I seem to recall the protagonist, a shepherd, attending a hiring fair and, humiliatingly, nobody wanting his services.  All very sad. 

And so it is with Mort, a young man from Sheepridge on the Discworld.  No one at the local hiring fair is interested in employing him; then at the stroke of  midnight Mort receives a most interesting job offer.  The position: Death's apprentice. Can a mortal assume the role of Death and live to tell the tale?  Mort is just about to find out.

In the fourth novel of the Discworld series, Terry Pratchett presents us with a tightly plotted and nicely paced story.  As we follow Mort on his rounds, we get to see more of the Discworld and learn more about its people and customs.  We also learn more about Death (who had cameo appearances in the previous books) and what goes on behind the scenes in his realm.  And we find out the consequences of tampering with history.  All this intertwines with a story of love, hate, infatuation and survival.

Also evident in this book is Pratchett's development as a storyteller: the narrative is sharper, the dialogue more powerful, the reasoning more intricate and the creative vision clearer.  What Pratchett had begun in Equal Rites (I have reservations about the first two books in the series) is elevated a notch or two in Mort.  

On a sadder note, I can't help drawing a comparison between Pratchett's explanation in this book of why ordinary humans are unable to see Death and his much later description of how Alzheimer's Disease was affecting his cognitive capacity (he was sometimes unable to see things that were there).

And the happy news?  As good as Mort is, the best is yet to come - and lots of it.

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Signature of All Things is one of the best books I have read in a long time: a fine, entertaining, informative and, above all, enjoyable tale.  What we have here is a finely wrought simulacrum of the very best of 19th century story-telling (I'm thinking of Anthony Trollope) imbued with a 21st century sensibility.  A strange thing to do, but it works beautifully.  I loved Trollope's The Warden and Barchester Towers.  Gilbert's novel, then, is in very good company.

Alma Whittaker, born on 5 January 1800, begins her life at the very beginning of the 19th Century.  Her story will come to echo some of the events of a century that was marked by great industrial developments, scientific achievements and social progress.  Alma's tale is prefaced by an engaging account of the rise of her father from obscurity in England to becoming one of the wealthiest men in a newly independent United States of America.

So, Alma grows up rich, she inherits a fine, enquiring mind and a practical aptitude for learning from both her parents, but she is not bonny.  These three hallmarks will, of course, come to shape her life  - and in some most unexpected ways, too.  New and interesting characters come into Alma's life, and they bring with them the seeds of love, pain, loss and sacrifice.  I don't want to say anymore about character and plot in case I spoil the book for the reader.

It is remarkable how Gilbert seems to know so much about so many things of the period, and she has a knack for conveying this information effortlessly and without being overly didactic.  The narrative voice is perfectly at home in the period, so the mood created rings authentically rather than seeming to be the product of exacting 21st century research.

 Overall, a remarkable achievement and an enjoyable read.  Highly recommended.