Dear Great Book Guru, Last night I was having dinner at Billy Long's Metro Bistro- what a crowd! There was a birthday celebration at the bar, great music at the front of the restaurant, and in the back a book group was meeting. In the midst of all the noise and excitement, I heard someone toasting Charles Dickens- apparently this year is the famed author's bicentennial. Do you have a good Dickens's biography I might read this month? Undaunted by Dickens


Dear Undaunted, Yes- Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 so this week would be his 200th birthday! I recently read BECOMING DICKENS by Robert Douglas Fairhurst This is an interesting biography in that it focuses on Dickens's amazing capacity to reinvent himself . The mournful thought "what might have been and what was not" permeates so many of his works from "The Christmas Carol" to "The Tale of Two Cities" and the other fifty or so in between. When his secure, affluent childhood collapses into financial ruin, his young business partner commits suicide in despair, and his first (and perhaps only love) dies suddenly, Dickens begins anew but always with angst and regret. His characters are searching for security: both emotional and financial. Fairhurst captures the genius of the man and also his almost crippling neurosis. In many ways, Dickens is his own finest character. After finishing the book, I vowed that I would begin a year of Dickens's readings- a Dickens Society of Sea Cliff- and where would we meet? Perhaps a back table at the Bistro…