Five Weeks in the Country
A Novel
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- USD 15.99
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- USD 15.99
Descripción editorial
From the acclaimed, award-winning author of Reading Like a Writer and Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris, 1932 comes an utterly original novel inspired by the strange friendship between Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen and set during the summer when Dickens's family life exploded.
In the summer of 1857, when British newspapers warned of an approaching comet about to destroy the earth, an unusual-looking stranger arrived at Charles Dickens's home, Gad's Hill, in the countryside outside London. Dickens had met Hans Christian Andersen at a dinner party, a decade before, and, in a moment of desperation, had invited him to visit.
The visit did not go well. The eccentric Danish author of classic fairy tales, who barely spoke English, outstayed his welcome and alienated the Dickens household, which included nine children. Even the oblivious, obsessively self-conscious Andersen sensed the increasing tension between Dickens and his unhappy wife, Catherine, but was slow to understand—or to believe—that Dickens had fallen in love with a young actress appearing in his new play. For Andersen, those five weeks were a series of social mistakes and embarrassments but ultimately a lesson in how life's most humbling experiences can be transformed into art.
Five Weeks in the Country, a work of imaginative fiction inspired by actual events, is Francine Prose at her dazzling best.
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Hans Christian Andersen visits Charles Dickens and his family in this revealing novel from Prose (The Vixen). The first section is narrated collectively by the nine Dickens children, who are confused and saddened by their customarily jovial father's coldness and angry impatience since he moved the household from London to Gad's Hill, a rural mansion in Kent. With the arrival of Andersen in spring 1857, the children find the perfect target for their pranks and mockery in the gangly and hypersensitive Dane, who speaks very little English but worships Dickens. In the next part, Dickens, 45, details his infatuation with a pretty 17-year-old actress he has cast in his new play. His torment hardly justifies his cruel treatment of his wife, Catherine, whom he taunts and demeans. He's also intensely jealous of his guest, refusing to show Andersen any approval or encouragement. Just as the reader begins to tire of the Dickens family, Prose turns to Andersen. In this final, vibrant section, the Danish writer reflects on his frustrations as a gay man unable to maintain a satisfying relationship, and he accurately details all that he has observed at Gad's Hill in a thinly disguised fairy tale about a comet causing fear and wonder. There's much to admire in this tale.
