A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens)
30 December 2020
'Merry Christmas!...every idiot who goes about with "Merry Christmas" on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding' Generations of readers have been enchanted by Dickens’ A Christmas Carol—the most cheerful ghost story ever written, and the unforgettable tale of Ebenezer Scrooge’s moral regeneration. Written in just a few weeks, A Christmas Carol famously recounts the plight of Bob Cratchit, whose family finds joy even in poverty, and the transformation of his miserly boss Scrooge as he is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future.From Scrooge’s “Bah!” and “Humbug!” to Tiny Tim’s “God bless us every one!” A Christmas Carol shines with warmth, decency, kindness, humility, and the value of the holidays. But beneath its sentimental surface, A Christmas Carol offers another of Dickens’s sharply critical portraits of a brutal society, and an inspiring celebration of the possibility of spiritual, psychological, and social change.
Average Rating:
Avril Stringer (27 January 2021 21:38)
When we decided to do this book we also had to watch at least one movie. This made me watch, for the first time, the Muppet version. So glad I did so - it is one of the best Christmas movies!
Sean Aaron (5 January 2021 07:42)
More readable than I find most of the 19th century English stories I’ve read, but a little too bombastic towards the end for me to give it four stars. You can see why a lot of adaptations skip this and that or embellished elsewhere, but it is iconic and worth a read.
Sinclair Manson (31 December 2020 20:55)
A story so deeply rooted in our culture that it seemed familiar from start to end. For me and, judging by the conversation about the book, for most others, it's hard to separate the novella from its multitudinous adaptations. The story is short and straightforward. From the first ghost, Scrooge is ready to mend his ways and offers no further resistance, as he is emotionally bludgeoned into decency. The simplicity of the story is part of the reason it has become iconic. Another part is the warm and playful writing that seems to relish everything it must describe. Scrooge's name has passed into the English language as a tribute to the gleeful art with which his meanness was written.