A midnight carol Book

A really quite delightful short novel based on a very fanciful -- Dickensianly fanciful, in fact -- account of the writing and publication of A Christmas Carol.

Dickens is immensely broke. His wife Catherine is expecting yet another addition to the family. His books haven't been selling -- the most recent, Martin Chuzzlewit, was a complete disaster. He's pretty certain his publishers, Squib & Ledrook, have been cheating him. Thomas Carlyle thinks his friend Charley should give up this fiction stuff to which he's obviously not suited and do something sensible like resume his journalistic career. But then Dickens has the inspiration for a book that will be such a surefire bestseller that all the family's financial problems will be over and done with forever . . .

The tale of how Dickens not just gets the book written and published but thwarts enemies, makes new friends among the Whitechapel urchin classes, spreads goodwill and does battle with the ghost of Oliver Cromwell -- the tale involves the intervention of Sir Robert Peel, founder of the Peelers and now prime minister, and Peel's stunningly lovely wife Julia. It's all good stuff, made to be taken with a pinch of salt, and it rollicks along in amiable, deliberately slightly over-the-top fashion. Davis, who's an American, gets the Old Country's version of English right most of the time, and after a while I found myself regarding her not infrequent lapses as just a part of the book's charm.

There's no reason at all why you should wait until Christmas to stuff a stocking -- your friend's or your child's or even your own. If you want to be traditionalist about things, though, the book's short enough that you could read it all on Christmas day while the relatives are quarreling. A spiffy read.