Drood: A Novel

Dan Simmons
Little, Brown and Company (2009)
ISBN 9780316007023
Reviewed by Deb Shunamon for Reader Views (7/09)


I love Dan Simmons. His sci-fi type novels are my favorites, but he has also proven time and again that his creepy tales, like “Drood,” are equally as great. Based on his research on Charles Dickens and his final years after surviving a horrendous train accident, Simmons has created a piece of fiction that wildly tested my beliefs and logic. I am still thinking hard about what to make of the being named Drood.

Wilkie Collins was a close friend of Charles Dickens, and a writer whose own works survive to this day. He narrates this story to the “Dear Readers of the Future,” recreating a generally horrific Victorian London as we learn of these two writers’ personal and professional lives, and their obsession with Drood. What, or who, is Drood? What is logical and truthful is represented by a Dickens who often reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. However, I was also convinced that he was severely traumatized due to the train accident until character after character stepped in to try and assure me that Drood was very much a sinister reality. I loved that I had a tough time deciding whether Wilkie was the only sane, albeit jealous, person or simply a hallucinating drug addict, and if Charles Dickens was a victim or villain. This is, after all, THE Charles Dickens being written about, and it is delightfully disturbing how I came to really dislike this revered author.

Many of Dan Simmons’ novels are very long because he simply writes until he feels the story is complete, and this book is over 700 pages. Everything in “Drood” is necessary, though, to allow Simmons the time to constantly test his readers’ convictions and toy with their trust. I, also, loved not knowing in which decaying opium den, or rotting place by the stinking Thames, I was going to find myself in next. And as I said, this author still has me thinking, despite long finishing the book, about the character named Drood.  Dan Simmons put me right into the Victorian Age, where the burgeoning science, social, and logical thinking of the time contrasted with fantastical beliefs, and he has given readers another seriously amazing novel with “Drood.”

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