The Penguin Blog

Dickens - Done! (the final part)

That's it. FINISHED!! We have finally Done Dickens. Over the past year-and-a-bit the tireless trio of Becky, Sam and I (with a few other hardy readers joining us occasionally) have braved 16 novels, countless late nights and over 10,000 pages to finish our mammoth quest to read all his novels. To be honest, I'm exhausted. It's just magazines until Christmas now. Or maybe just drooling in front of the television.

Our final novel was The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which Dickens died halfway through writing - leaving its mystery (who caused the disappearance of Edwin one stormy Christmas Eve?) unsolved. I was relieved to discover, however, that the culprit is so obvious a claxon almost sounds every time he appears, and that Dickens told practically everyone he knew the ending anyway. Phew. The joys in this book come from it feeling both reassuringly like Dickens's earlier novels in its pastoral setting and manageable number of characters, yet also rather experimental and modern with its Agatha Christie-like structure, its racy opening scene in a drug den, and the respectable choirmaster-slash-sexually obsessed, opium-addicted maniac, John Jasper. 

We were very satisfied by Edwin Drood, but also left very, very sad that Dickens was cut short in his prime. There's no sign of a dropping off in talent. Instead his novels seemed to be getting darker, weirder and more experimental every time, and each one was utterly different from every other. He could have gone on to write a dozen more masterpieces. But we'll never know what came next.

I remember saying when I read our first novel, The Pickwick Papers, that I felt I was going to make a friend for life, and I did. Dickens is like the loudest, funniest person in the room at a party. True, he might get drunk and maudlin and go on a bit, but he's really the only one you want to talk to. I'd defend him to anyone.

Why? Firstly he is HILARIOUS. I genuinely didn't realise how funny his writing would be. Whether it's Betsey Trotwood and her donkey fixation, the Fat Boy in Pickwick storing food in his mouth overnight or, of course, cheeky cockney Sam Weller, Dickens creates characters of comic genius. Secondly, no-one does dialogue like Dickens. Apparently he used to practice his characters' verbal tics in front of a mirror, and you can always tell. Whenever I read a piece of dialogue by another writer now, it just blends into one voice. Thirdly, there is no such thing as a bad Dickens novel. Even the ones we liked less (step forward, Oliver Twist), had a hundred times more invention, imagination, memorable characters, scenes, descriptions, speeches and pure fun than most other books of the time - and today. I could go on all day but you might fall asleep, so instead I'll finish with the novels in order of our favourites.

Behold, our festive Dickens hit parade!

1. David Copperfield is our top book. Moving, memorable, hilarious perfection, with more great characters than most other writers could create in their whole career.

2. Dombey and Son. We can't understand why this gripping, heartbreaking story of a dysfunctional family isn't more loved or popular.

3. Great Expectations. I wanted this at number 2, but Becky and Sam overruled me. Still, we all loved its elegiac, grown-up sadness and fairytale beauty.

4. A Christmas Carol. A story so perfect it feels as though it's always existed, and couldn't possibly have popped out of one person's head.

5. A Tale of Two Cities. A rollicking, blood-soaked weep-fest.

6. Nicholas Nickleby. We'd put this above the Big Beasts for its theatrical exuberance.

7. Little Dorrit. Now on to the serious ones. Best last line ever.

8. Our Mutual Friend. Perplexing, murky, haunting, utterly dark.

9. Bleak House. Also grimly brilliant, but I didn't take it to my heart as much as some others.

10. The Pickwick Papers. Such a drunken joy that I nearly put it above the big famous novels, but then remembered that it doesn't really have a story.

11. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Such promising weirdness.

12. Hard Times. Too short! (but still has some great baddies).

13. Barnaby Rudge. The thrilling mob violence almost makes up for the parts where not much happens.

14. Martin Chuzzlewit. Frustratingly excellent in parts.

15. Oliver Twist. Becky wanted this at the bottom, but I thought Nancy's murder saved it.

16. The Old Curiosity Shop. Thank goodness for Quilp.


Thanks Dickens, it's been a blast.

Louise Willder, Copywriter

On the road at the Istanbul Book Fair

Sitting in a café in Istanbul, eating baklava and drinking coffee whilst reading Orhan Pamuk. I am, as a tourist, distinctly unimaginative. But that is how I chose to spend my days off, having spent three days meeting publishers and visiting the İstanbul Kitap Fuarı, or Istanbul Book Fair, on my very first sales trip.

Before leaving, I was fairly convinced that no amount of preparation would be enough. Reading profiles, looking at past submissions and trying to become fluent enough in Turkish to be able to understand publisher’s websites (Google translate only goes so far) somehow didn’t seem enough. It turns out however that one of the greatest pleasures when meeting foreign publishers is not wowing them with what you do know, but rather admitting what you don’t. This gives the publishers – the obvious experts in the field – the chance to tell you about their market. And the picture painted by the Turkish editors I met was a refreshingly positive one.

The Turkish market is growing. According to some, it has quadrupled in the last five or six years. New publishing companies are springing up and building their lists. Book shops with floor to ceiling shelves, wooden floors and a healthy supply of interested customers are open until late. The number of foreign publishers visiting the yearly book fair in Istanbul is growing and grants are on offer from the Turkish government to help agencies cover the cost of making more international trips.

There is also however a fair amount of trepidation. While publishers such as CAN, Siren, Yapı Kredi and Everest are producing literary fiction, historical romance remains the most popular genre by far. One editor speaks of a disparity between what editors will buy and what sells, suggesting that not everything in the book shops is to the public’s taste. There also appears to be a lack of a Young Adult market, although Twilight and before that Harry Potter managed to overcome the competition from video games and other media to go on to sell well.  Time will tell how the new publishers will fair. As one editor from an established house put it, ‘we’re all in the same boat.'

The ebook market in Turkey is still small but people appear confident that it will grow here as it has done elsewhere. The despondency of one non-fiction editor who told me that this meant that in ten years we’d all be out of the job was tempered only by his editor/translator colleague chiming in that he’d been hoping to retire to a small place by the coast anyway.

Lots of the people I’ve met seem to have come to publishing after working somewhere else first. Working in a bank, for the government or as a translator, the effect is one of perspective –publishing doesn’t feel like an isolated industry but rather part of the country’s identity, its history and its language. Academics edit, editors translate, banks own publishing houses and literary agents study for Masters Degrees in their spare time. A history editor happily translated my name into Ottoman Turkish, whilst chain smoking and discussing which of our titles might work for their list.

If Turkish publishers are all in the same boat, then it certainly seems that the waters they’re sailing on are calmer than our own, for the time being at least. While publishers in the UK nervously watch to see whether arrows will be green or red, pointing upwards or downwards, talk in Turkey is of growth. Visiting a new publisher in an office consisting of five chairs and three desks and discussing their vision for their list gives the impression that something exciting is going on; long may it continue.

 

Ansa Khan Khattak
Penguin Rights Executive

 

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Doing Dickens – Part 15

I've always wanted to say "We're gonna have to pull an all-nighter!" in the manner of a 70s journalist breaking Watergate whilst eating Chinese food from cartons. Staying up until 3am to finish Our Mutual Friend, the second-to-last novel in our Dickens marathon, almost felt as good.

This is a long, murky devil of a book, but I'm glad I persevered. Our Mutual Friend is dark, fantastical, mysterious, uneven, often frustrating, but I loved it. This story of a fortune made from 'dust heaps' (according to the notes, mountains of waste!) has the weird humour that the Big Monsters Bleak House and Little Dorrit sometimes lacked, but with all their grimy atmosphere and obsession with money. It has fantastic melodrama, murders, doubles, disguises, sexual obsession, disappearances, blackmail and con artists. It has a psychologically fascinating villain in repressed schoolteacher Bradley Headstone, possessed by lust, grinding his fists against walls until they bleed. And it has the dark, swirling Thames, which runs through the story and sucks everyone into its power.

Best of all are the women. Yes, the familiar creepy father/daughter relationships are still here, yet I felt something had shifted. The women are interesting and (mostly) non-saintly. They are stronger than their fathers; they make their own livings, they change and develop, and the central heroines Bella and Lizzie both, in different ways, save the men they marry. Jenny Wren, a crippled doll's dressmaker of childlike appearance, is a strange presence, but also has a sharp brain, seeing through the 'tricks and manners' of the men around her.

I don’t think the upper-class characters in the novel work so well, but perhaps that's because it's the weak, the humble and the odd that really interest Dickens. Please, please don't be put off by the gargantuan size of Our Mutual Friend, and give this strange and brilliant book a try.

Next time, we shall be wearing black armbands for our very last Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood...  

Louise Willder, Copywriter