Death and Mr Pickwick
Reviews
What do reviewers say about Death and Mr Pickwick?
"A masterpiece of imagination supported by a mountain of research." - Sunday Telegraph.
"An outstanding first novel....Burstingly informative and thronged with colourful characters, (Jarvis’s) panoramic novel about the shady start and sunny breakthrough of a literary phenomenon is a phenomenon itself." - Sunday Times.
"It offers a reading experience as immersive as Wolf Hall and as visionary in its capacity to connect us with past lives. As a former Man Booker judge, I will eat my hat if it doesn't make this year's list." - Independent.
"This astounding first novel...is a staggering accomplishment." - Publisher's Weekly.
"Dickens himself would be proud of Jarvis's capture of so huge a slice of life." - Kirkus.
“Some may view this book as a remarkable piece of literary detection, others a dazzlingly
written and superbly imagined exposition of how art and writing are gestated and born.
Or both.” - Daily Mail.
"(F)ormidably knowledgeable...Jarvis sends readers on marvelous excursions into
English social and cultural life in the early nineteenth century" - Washington Post
“For someone saddened that there will never be any more new novels coming from the pen of
Charles Dickens, Jarvis’s sprawling, 800-page work could be the next big thing.” - NPR
“How can I convince you to lose yourself in first-time novelist Stephen Jarvis’ magnificent, 802-page Death and Mr. Pickwick?. . . . [B]reathtaking shape and scope…. Jarvis stakes a winning claim that we need more novels like it. ” – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"One of 10 knockout fictional feasts" - O (Oprah) Magazine July 2015
"Jarvis has the enviable skill of being able to switch nimbly not just from character to character,
but from story to story — all while holding the reader engrossed. Like Russian nesting dolls,
there are stories within stories within stories in this book" - Washington Independent July 2015
"This is an astonishing debut" - Evening Standard's Best Summer Books List
"Stephen Jarvis punctuates Dickens’s skills with this
impeccable piece of historical fiction." - Buffalo News
To Do: July 15–July 29, 2015--Twenty-five things
to see, hear, watch, and read - New York Magazine
News
"The Music from Death and Mr Pickwick"
Paul Thompson is not only a huge fan of Death and Mr Pickwick, he is also a musician - indeed, he runs the Twang Tuition guitar school - and Paul has released this 13-minute video in which he and his band play some of the songs mentioned in Death and Mr Pickwick. But also, the video adds images with an accompanying voiceover derived from the text to convey key aspects of the book: that Death and Mr Pickwick is about the dawning of the age of global celebrity culture; that at the heart of the book is a clash between two men of genius, Charles Dickens, a genius of words, and Robert Seymour, a genius of pictures; and that the death of a clown sets in motion a train of extraordinary events. Even the wine bottles and glasses on show in the video evoke the novel's scenes of heavy drinking in nineteenth-century London.
I think Paul's video perfectly captures the essence of Death and Mr Pickwick - and actually, I wonder whether anything like this video has been done for a novel before? Anyway, here is the link to...Music from Death and Mr Pickwick: https://youtu.be/S4OPuFCW1m8
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Instagram Feed -- the journey of the book
