The Mutual Friend - Softcover

Busch, Frederick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811212580 ISBN 13: 9780811212588

Publisher: New Directions, 1994

Synopsis

The subject of Frederick Busch’s extraordinary fiction, The Mutual Friend, is Charles Dickens. First published in 1978, Busch’s portrait of the Chief (or the Inimitable, as Dickens calls himself) was immediately hailed as a lively, accurate, and brilliantly imagined novel of the great Victorian and his age. Busch’s guide to Dickens’ world is George Dolby, the Chief’s factotum in his last years. The reminiscence begins with the Great American Tour of 1867-68, Dickens is ill and crotchety but ever eager to dazzle the New World with his dramatic readings. Through Dolby we come to a circle of characters around Dickens, among them his long-suffering wife Kate and the actress Ellen Ternan, mistress to the Inimitable. Of Busch’s compelling mastery over his larger-than-life subject, the English critic Angus Wilson writes, “Mr. Busch gives us Dickens in all his genius and makes us understand how that genius worked.”

About this title

About the Author

Frederick Busch (1941–2006) was the recipient of many honors, including an American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, a National Jewish Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award. The prolific author of sixteen novels and six collections of short stories, Busch is renowned for his writing’s emotional nuance and minimal, plainspoken style. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he lived most of his life in upstate New York, where he worked for forty years as a professor at Colgate University.

Reviews

Busch's 1978 novel reveals the character of Charles Dickens through narrator George Dolby, who serves as the novelist's jack-of-all-trades. LJ's reviewer stated, "the complex narrative is handled brilliantly," and both Dickens and Dolby emerge as fully developed characters (LJ 5/15/78).
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811212580
• ISBN 13: 9780811212588
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224