A Christmas Carol

As a general rule, I find Dickens to be a bit of a downer; I accept that he is a great writer but I can only take so much misfortune in one sitting. Fortunately, A Christmas Carol is not, in my opinion, his standard fare, and is all the better for it. Granted, there is misfortune aplenty, but at least in this case it serves a purpose, rather than just highlighting how crappy Victorian life could be. In addition, the humour, albeit satirical, is more to the fore, rather than the smiling-through-the-pain approach of his other novels.

What really elevates this novel to the realm of “revisitibility”, however, is the audiobook, with narrator Simon Prebble. Much as Dickens originally intended, this feels more like a theatre experience than a dry reading. If anyone is, like me, in two minds about Dickens, I can strongly recommend this version.