LUCY LETHBRIDGE
I galloped through A.N. Wilson’s irresistibly readable The Mystery of Charles Dickens (Atlantic, £17.99; Tablet price £16.19) and loved it. Wilson weaves the life into the fiction in fascinating, complex patterns. It’s a very personal book by an author who deeply loves Dickens’ novels, seeing in the extraordinary, boiling energy of their creator evidence of a divided soul: a man capable of both kindness and cruelty and carrying within him always the shadow of the abandoned child.
RICHARD HOLLOWAY
My book of the moment is Barbara Kingsolver’s 1998 novel about American missionaries in the Congo, just at the end of Belgium’s rule of horror. The Poisonwood Bible (Faber & Faber, £8.99; Tablet price £8.09) makes Conrad’s Heart of Darkness read like a light romance, and also serves as a useful primer on how not to read the Bible.
MARY BLANCHE RIDGE
I decided to reread George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss after a gap of 50 years, and was so glad I did. I loved it as much as ever but had never noticed what a marvellously funny book it is, in its rich human observations. The ending has been criticised as operatic and contrived, but I was carried along in the cathartic floodwaters beside Maggie, completely captivated by the writing.
