DROOD

Narrator John Lee puts everything he's got into his performance of DROOD, a gothic fantasy that takes place during the final few years of Charles Dickens's life. Reading with crisp precision, Lee morphs into narrator Wilkie Collins, Dickens's jealous collaborator and competitor. Sounding, by turns, breathy or raspy or agitated, and always condescending, Lee captures Collins's flawed character with panache. Told from Collins's self-absorbed and opiated viewpoint, DROOD depicts London's other-worldly underground with creepy verisimilitude. Despite its sinister atmosphere, and some really grisly bits, this book is a love song to Dickens, with references galore to many of his better- and lesser-known works. This clever blend of fact and fiction should delight fans of Victorian England and her archetypical literature. R.M. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine [Published: APRIL 2009]