Under the Harrow
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
A Dickensian novel, being "An account, most curious, of Dingley Dell and its deceived denizens before and after the dastardly deception, told by one of the duped who was most willing to indite the whole diabolical affair for the delectation of all delving Out-land readers. Presented with a preface and some notes.
by Frederick Timmens Esquire."
Welcome to Dingley Dell. The Encyclopedia Britannica (Ninth Edition from 1885), a King James Bible, a world atlas, and a complete set of the novels of Charles Dickens are the only books left to the orphans of Dingley Dell when the clandestine anthropological experiment begins. From these, they develop their own society, steeped in Victorian tradition and the values of a Dickensian world. For over a century Dinglians live out this semi-idyllic and anachronistic existence, aided only by minimal trade with the supposedly plague-ridden Outland.
"Mark Dunn is a wry eyewitness along the lines of James Wilcox or Larry McMurty - Impish and forgiving, here is a writer who observes the commandment: Thou shalt love thy characters. And they pay him back in buckets." Leif Enger, author of Peace Like a River.
"Clever, comical.. delightful." Kirkus Reviews
"Dunn brilliantly demonstrates his ability to delight and captivate" - Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dingley Dell is a self-contained valley peopled by orphans, whose guardians abandoned them with only an encyclopedia and the works of Charles Dickens. From these beginnings comes a Victorian society whose limited trade with outsiders raises more question than it answers. Those who leave rarely return or are considered mad. The beginning drags a bit as the residents try to figure out what the reader already knows, but the tide turns and comes in fast once a runaway returns to the valley. Scribe-for-hire Trimmers and his friends, amateur sleuths disguised as a poetry society, discover that their strange world will come to a quick and bloody end unless they act. This sometimes perplexing but well-executed tale winds up feeling like a surprisingly hardy crossbreed of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and Eric Flint's 1632.
