... excellent.

Whether you think modern critical theory a triumph or a travesty—or, alternatingly, both—John Mullan, in The Artful Dickens, has something to offer.

... splendid.

Mullan has taken the most popular Victorian novelist and, by holding different facets of his literary technique up to the light, found new angles from which to admire the work. By the end of this teacherly but readable analysis, Dickens’s novels are sparkling as if spring-cleaned.

Rather than advance a consistent argument about Dickens’s artistry, Mullan responds to the novelist’s multifariousness with an appealing miscellany of his own.

Put it on your Christmas list and spend the post-goose collapse reading the good bits aloud.

His method in each chapter is to define a specific feature and produce examples. Some readers will find that expedient, but Mullan is a brisk and observant writer. He is happy to be taken in by Dickens’s sorcery.

Mullan wants to argue—ambitiously—that Dickens’s sleights of language amounted to a ‘formal daring’ or ‘experimental verve’ which ‘gave prose new dramatic powers’ and thus transformed the novel as a genre.

... incisive.

Based on insightful close readings of Charles Dickens’ novels, letters, and meticulously revised manuscripts, literary scholar Mullan offers ample evidence of the 'technical boldness' and 'experimental verve' of Dickens’ prolific oeuvre. In discrete chapters, the author highlights more than a dozen characteristics that set Dickens apart from other writers.