Review: Christmas Classic!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 27, 2014
Heart-warming: that is my one word review for this book.This has to be one of the most read and loved stories of all time. It works, whether one views it as a Christian allegory or a simple fantasy. I was laughing along with Scrooge in the last chapter. I was wondering whether the magic would still work with a moderately cynical middle-aged man. It did.The story could have been maudlin, sentimental, didactic and moralizing. That it is none of this is due to Dickens' mastery of the medium. From the beginning to end, there is hardly a word out of place: and the narrative is structured so meticulously that one simply floats through the story, along with Scrooge and the ghosts.Take the first paragraph:Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.This sets the whole tone of the novel. The conversational style with its mock serious tone of voice; Dickens is sitting near to you, with a tankard of ale in front of him, on a cold December day in the neighborhood pub. He is entertaining you with a Christmas tale. It is not to be taken very seriously, but the teller's heart is in it-if you listen to it carefully, it may work wonders for you.The handful of characters are finely etched: true to its fairytale nature, the "good" and "bad" are strongly bifurcated without any shades of grey, yet we find ourselves loving even the bad characters. Scrooge, for all his miserly and cantankerous nature, can never be taken seriously: his "bah!" and "humbug!", we feel, are most applicable to the persona he presents to the world. And as we visit the lonely boy in the classroom, we get an idea how Scrooge turned out to be the man he is: the colossal insecurity of the impoverished child, developing into the worship of money for its own sake, and building a barrier of hatred against society so that it can never hurt him.Like a five-act play, time and space are compressed into an evening, night and the next day. As we sweep through the narrative at breakneck speed, Scrooge's character undergoes a tremendous transformation which is possible only in fables and fairy tales: however, the author has already set the stage for it in the opening chapter itself by showing us the chinks in his armor. The development of the miser of the first chapter into the loving philanthropist of the last chapter seems not only possible, but natural.A perfect Christmas fable for everybody. Recommended for young and old alike.