Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Nicholas Nickleby - notes

Names, as always in Dickens, are often invented for comical or other effect, starting with Dotheboys Hall (apparently in one audiobook version it was pronounced to rhyme more or less with Sotheby’s – completely obscuring Dickens’ intention).

Reading Dickens takes commitment these days. He published his books as serials, and the result is what we might be tempted to see as a colossal “waste of space” (e.g. the storytelling about the Five Sisters of York and Baron Grogzwig; all the business with the Kenwigs and Mr Lillyvick; and, of course, Mrs Nickleby). Several bookclubbers listened to audiobook versions, which were really excellent as far as expression and characterisation were concerned. However, his elaborate descriptions are hugely enjoyable, e.g. of the Infant Phenomenon, who is used to show what a complete sham the theatrical world is.

Another thing that strikes the modern reader is the number of married couples: husbands and wives who, with all their faults or even wickedness, still loved each other in their way – the Squeers, the Mantalinis, the Crummles.

The Cheeryble brothers, extreme philanthropists, balance the extreme evil of Ralph Nickleby and Squeers.

Dickens’ work is modern writing in that his humour stands the test of time, and still makes readers laugh aloud; it is not staid or dated. There was a recent West End show of Nicholas Nickleby – British humour is a cultural thing, often consisting of laughing at ourselves.

Kindness and mercy are completely absent in Squeers (and Mrs Squeers). Dickens plays with horrible effect on their affection for each other in combination of their cruelty towards the boys, as when Mr Squeers is about to beat Smike for running away:

'Have you anything to say?' demanded Squeers again: giving his right arm two or three flourishes to try its power and suppleness. 'Stand a little out of the way, Mrs. Squeers, my dear; I've hardly got room enough.'

'Spare me, sir!' cried Smike.

'Oh! that's all, is it?' said Squeers. 'Yes, I'll flog you within an inch of your life, and spare you that.'

Mercy is also absent from Ralph Nickleby. He does soften slightly at the sight of Kate’s beauty and gentleness, though not much, often, or for long. The theme of mercy is brought home very tellingly by Charles Cheeryble at the end of the book: he offers mercy to Ralph, who contemptuously rejects it, only to fall prey to bitter remorse without repentance.

Connected with mercy is solidarity and brotherhood, notable especially in Nicholas’ behaviour towards Smike throughout the book.

Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin

Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin, 2009

This book has already been discussed and reviewed very extensively. It is a good read, convincingly written so that you can, or imagine you can, hear the Tanzanians and Rwandans speaking. It invites comparisons with Alexander McCall Smith’s Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency books, but is in a way much more serious, being set in post-genocide Kigali, with the multiple problems of “truth and justice”, Aids, malaria, orphaned street-children, and more.

A very telling aspect is how the various characters work together to rebuild Rwanda, at a very local and personal level.

Angel, the central figure, makes cakes to order. Each chapter is broadly built around a different cake, and the Cake Order Form, is one of the devices that unite the narrative into a whole. Angel also has a habit of polishing her glasses when she needs time to think; and making hot steaming mugs of sweet, spicy tea.

Parkin clearly draws very extensively on her own experience as an HIV-Aids counsellor in Kigali. What is conspicuous by its absence is any coherent notion of marriage or of the value of morality, continence, chastity or faithfulness. In the many incidents and discussions in the book which touch on weddings, marriage, and couples, there is no understanding of marriage and love as self-giving.

Certainly, Angel and Pius are faithfully married, and Angel refers with deep disapproval to the way a young woman called Linda dresses: “she had never seen a man look at Linda’s face; there were always other parts of her body that were asking more urgently to be observed.” Angel has good values, but does not reflect on them. She and Pius are Catholics, but they know that some Catholics, even nuns and priests, took part in the killing in 1994. “In Rwanda we’re simply Christians. I’m nervous of attending just one church here, of listening to just one priest. Because how can we know what is truly in that priest’s heart after so many showed that love and peace were only words in their mouths? So we attend a different church every second week; in between, we still attend our local Catholic church” (p.85).

At the very start of the book, Angel explains that when she and her husband got married (they are now grandparents), they were “pioneers” of contraception, and were careful to have only two children “so that we could afford to educate them well.” In the event, their children, having had children of their own, both lost their respective spouses and died before the start of the book, and Angel and her husband Pius are now starting all over again, bringing up their five grandchildren as their own children. The book does not point the moral, but it is actually a clear instance of how wrong-headed it is to contracept in order to have fewer children and hence more money.

A fairly important figure in the book is Jeanne d’Arc, who, having been orphaned and gang-raped during the genocide at the age of eleven, has been a prostitute for the past seven years in order to support herself, her two sisters, and a small boy they found abandoned. Angel is able to help Jeanne d’Arc in many different ways, finally putting her in touch with someone who can teach her to sew to be able to earn her living in a “safer” way. But, at the same time, she jokes with someone else about Jeanne d’Arc and her “business”. Perhaps she develops more compassion for Jeanne d’Arc in the course of the book.

Angel is able to help people in many ways in the course of her business. One often has the impression that the author had a list of themes she wanted to bring in, and worked through them – FGM, the mayibobo (street children), truthfulness to oneself and to others, Catholicism in Rwanda – chapter by chapter, through the book.

Overall it is a good read, ideal for provoking enjoyable discussions, which need to take each theme a lot deeper, with a lot more informed input, than the book itself is able to do.