This is a fictionalised account of Dicken’s life, seen after his death through the eyes of his wife, who had been estranged from him for many years. The author renames Dickens Gibson, and his wife becomes Dorothea. The titles of his many books are also changed. By the end of the novel, Dorothea has decided to try and complete Dicken’s final work, despite having no writing experience herself.

The book was Helen’s choice and was long listed for the Man Booker prize.

She says: “I was drawn by the fact that it was based on Charles Dickens’ life – I saw it at the top of the list sent round by Anna and thought “I’ll give that a go. I really enjoyed it. It was a treat. But it soon turned into a different kind of novel about the stories we tell and the untold stories. The one story you don’t get is Dickens’ story.”

“Dorothea (Dickens’ estranged wife and then widow) was a wet blanket – quite emotionally absent.”

“She enjoys her martyrdom – it does make it hard to empathise with her.”

“But how could she have lived with a man like that (Dickens)? He was so controlling, he managed everything, how the children were arranged, what the curtains looked like.”

Some elements of the book stretched our readers’ patience-

“If it had been the daughter who had tried to finish it (the novel) that would have been believable.”

“I found it really frustrating that we never found out if Dickens had used his friend O’Rourke’s name to rent that house for his mistress.”

One member said that one of the reasons he’d joined the book group was “it would force me to read books I wouldn’t normally read. I looked through this one and I kept seeing pages and pages of italicized bits and I just thought that is really going to annoy me. If someone gives me a nice book on Morris Minors I’ll get stuck into that.”

Another claimed to have been prevented from getting on with the book because she was distracted by a poster of Tony Curtis. (This is understandable).

In summary, our readers were divided on whether they enjoyed the book or not – but everyone was agreed that the quality of the writing did not merit a nomination for the Man Booker prize.