Mystery of Edwin Drood (Ultimate Classics)

Rating:
Summary: More mysterious every time
Review: I've read this several times and this time it seems even more haunting. It would have been a relatively short novel for Dickens even if he had finished it, and the fragment gives the impression of being very carefully planned. There are no unnecessary scenes. Every character seems to havea point. The cathedral town is vivid. I ince visted Rochester on acold day and it was quite eerie having lunch in a restaurant that was actually a house in the book.

But who did it? This time I have noticed more clues. I am sure the answer is something like "The Moonstone". A murder committed under her influence of opium. Jasper seems to try the drug on Durdles (in the crypt) and on Neville and Edwin - who feel very strange after having wine with him. My money is on Neville being the killer - but under the influence of opium - so he actually does it, but Jasper is responsible. I assume Edwin ended up in the quicklime, but he could easily have escaped. It would be a bit daring to kill of an ionnocent character in a family novel. Jasper had wasted his time as Edwin does not want marry Rosa, so in the end I suspect Jasper would confess - but what would happen to Neville? Legally he would still be guilty, so I imagine he would go back to Ceylon. That would leave Rosa to marry Tartar and Crisparkle to marry Helena. Very neat. Oh, and then Bazzard would be Datchery (the black eyebrows...)

But like some other good mysteries there is a strangeness about this book which is beyond the actual plot. Wonderful.

Rating:
Summary: The Game Is Afoot, But We'll Never Know the Outcome
Review: It is so strange to see a long, well-plotted novel suddenly come to a dead stop. (Of a projected twelve episodes, Dickens wrote six before his death.) The title character is either murdered or missing, and a large cast of characters in London and Cloisterham (Dickens's Rochester) are involved in their own way in discovering what happened to Edwin Drood.

There is first of all John Jasper, an opium addict who suspiciously loves Drood's ex-fiancee; there is a nameless old woman who dealt him the opium who is trying to nail Jasper; there is a suspicious pile of quicklime Jasper notices during a late night stroll through the cathedral precincts; there is Durdles who knows all the secrets of the Cathedral of Cloisterham's underground burial chambers; there is the "deputy," a boy in the pay of several characters who has seen all the comings and goings; there are the Anglo-Indian Landless twins, one of whom developed a suspicious loathing for Drood; there is the lovely Rosebud, unwilling target of every man's affections; and we haven't even begun talking about Canon Crisparkle, Datchery, Tartar, and a host of other characters. All we know is that the game is afoot, but we'll never know the outcome.

It would have been nice to know how Dickens tied together all these threads, but we can still enjoy THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD because -- wherever Dickens was heading with it -- it is very evidently the equal of his best works. Life is fleeting, and not all masterpieces are finished.

Rating:
Summary: Inconclusive
Review: It's extremely difficult to judge "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", the last of Charles Dickens's novels, merely due to the fact that it was left incomplete upon Dickens's death. Of course, this gives ample scope for useless speculation on how the novel might have ended - in particular what could have happened to Edwin Drood himself, who vanishes part way through what's left of the novel.

I couldn't find enough in "Drood" either to condemn it, or to praise it. I was struck by the fact that despite it being the last of Dickens's works, it still bore the hallmarks of much of his earlier stuff - for example, sharp social cirticism (such as that directed against the philanthropist Mr Honeythunder) was swamped by the usual charicatures, such as the urchin "Deputy" and the obligatory gaggle of two-dimensional female characters.

All this was achieved despite the plot being tighter than many of his other novels. Seemingly, Dickens was able to work to a narrower brief yet was unable to cast off completely the habits of his more voluminous novels. "Drood" might have promised much, but to expect another "Great Expectations" would be too much.

G Rodgers