Simmons has been a popular horror and science fiction writer for a long time, but I (along with many others) first became aware of his work with the phenomenal 2007 historical horror novel, The Terror. This book combined the real life story of the doomed Franklin Expedition which disappeared without a trace on a mission to explore the Arctic in the 1840s, with supernatural horror to fantastic effect. With their ships frozen in the ice, the crew’s struggle for survival gets increasingly desperate; all the while they are threatened by a terrible, polar-bear like monster that seeks to tear them limb from limb in the best horror tradition.
Simmon’s prose is so rich you can feel the sting of the -40 degree temperatures and see the blood of the monster’s victims as it streaks across the ice—all this set against a backdrop of beautiful and absolutely terrifying isolation at the top of the world. Even with the horrors of the climate and the monster to contend with, the real danger comes from within the crew itself, and as the struggle for survival becomes more and more desperate, the crew members begin to turn on one another. I’ve never read a book with a character more loathsome than Cornelius Hickey, who commits actions against his fellow men far more disgusting than anything perpetrated by the monster.
To watch this vile man ruin the crew’s hopes for survival time and time again is heartbreaking. In modern fiction it has become too much of a cliché that villains are the most sympathetic and wronged characters—in Cornelius Hickey, Simmons created a monster that was just that: a monster. All the worst instincts of humanity squished together in a horrible package. It is a testament to Simmon’s skill as a writer that this character was so utterly detestable, and The Terror is stuffed to the brim with similarly well drawn characters, moody descriptions, and a plot that makes it’s 700 plus pages fly by.
Drood is not that good.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved the book. But after an achievement like The Terror, it’s only natural that the follow up is somewhat disappointing. Most of the problem is in the way the book is marketed. On the cover we see a shadowy figure against the familiar backdrop of Victorian London, and from the description inside the jacket Drood seems to be another historical horror tale in the exact same vein as The Terror. It is even placed in the horror section of the bookstore, so the reader can be forgiven for coming to the book with a certain set of expectations. There are horror elements, for sure, and some of them are quite terrifying, but this book is far more history than horror. Instead it takes a cue from Simmon’s portrayal of Hickey and makes its monster not some external nightmare creature, but that most ugly and disgusting of human emotions: Jealousy.
I will go ahead and damage my English major credibility by admitting right of the bat that before I read Drood, I knew very little about the novel’s two main characters, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Of course I knew who Dickens was and had read a few of his books, heard the stories of the people waiting at the docks for the latest installment of his tales, and had used the adjective ‘Dickensian’ in multiple situations over the years. But I knew almost nothing about the man. As for Wilkie Collins, the book’s narrator and central protagonist? Sadly, this was the first I’d heard of him.
Like I said, I went into this book expecting a tale of Victorian horror; something along the lines of Dracula or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with perhaps a bit of A Christmas Carol or Oliver Twist thrown in for good measure. I’ve always been a fan of the time period, and when I was in high school I even attempted a god-awful Victorian novel of my own, something about the true story of Jack the Ripper. (I think my brilliant original take on the idea was that Jack was actually the sympathetic hero of the story, and the world simply didn’t understand, i.e., the Anakin Skywalker explanation of evil).
In any event, the first few chapters of the book definitely met my expectations, both for a horror novel and for a successor to The Terror. Dickens explains to Collins in vivid detail the events of the Staplehurst rail crash of 1865—a horrific disaster in which Dickens’ train jumped the track and hurled into a ravine, killing many. Dickens and the book’s title character, the mysterious, corpse-like Drood, flit among the dead and dying, doing their best to help (?) the survivors. It is a scene of wrecked fuselage, shattered bodies, severed limbs, and the desperate moans of the wounded. Hovering above it all is the mysterious figure of Drood, who we later learn was traveling by coffin. Is he a man? A zombie? A vampire? These are the questions the first section of the book lays out for us.
And then they’re not answered. Or they are answered, but after the first hundred pages or so they hardly form the focus of the book. It becomes much more historical and biographical, and, some have argued, less interesting. But I disagree. If you can divorce yourself from expectations, what you will find in Drood is a story of two men, both of them writers, and their competition with one another. Wilkie Collins is Dickens’ friend, but, more importantly, he is jealous of the older, more famous writer, who he calls the Inimitable with no small amount of sarcasm.
This jealousy, combined with Collins’ growing addiction to opium, forms the basis for increasingly twisted ideas, visions, and actions. We never quite know which of Collins’ hallucinations are real and which are false. They all share one thing in common, though: The signs of a jealous, sometimes petty man who would believe in anything except his own inferiority. Whether this is a massive character assassination on the real life Wilkie Collins I will never know, but for me our narrator’s cruel cynicism and selfishness came off poorly against Dickens almost childlike joy at everyday life.
This is a book for writers. It gives physical manifestation to the all too common reality of professional jealousy, and both main characters have an intimate understanding of the writer’s life. In one of my favorite passages, Collins writes:
When the last autumn of Dickens’ life was over, he continued to work through this final winter into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation?
Would we trade all of those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute?
There is no one who has lived the life of the writer who has not had these thoughts from time to time—some more than others, of course, but thoughtful passages like this keep the often reprehensible Wilkie from coming off as completely despicable. Writing can be a lonely profession, and often one that brings with it no clear signs of reward, at least not immediately. What I love about this passage and this book is that you can tell it was written by someone who takes writing seriously, who knows all to well the pain and setbacks and frustrations that come with failure, but also, in the person of Dickens, the beautiful joys that come with effort. Unlike Dickens and Collins, most writers are both Dickens and Collins—at one moment frustrated by loneliness or lack of recognition, and at others overcome by the overwhelming joy that comes with being creative, with creating characters and stories, with the simple use of words and language.
Another favorite moment is earlier in the book, when Collins takes an unfinished draft of his upcoming novel, which he plans to call “The Serpent’s Eye (Or, possibly The Eye of the Serpent).” Dickens loves the novel, he says, but then lays into poor Wilkie with a list of possible corrections and changes. This moment is very real and well done, and anyone who’s ever tried to do anything creative has been there. Listening to someone else easily rattle of possible changes and alterations to something you’ve been working on for months is difficult in any situation, but oftentimes, as is the case with Dickens, those suggestions are right on the money. It’s a wonderful little moment, us alone together with these two great writers, watching them work, watching as Wilkie’s resentment of Dickens builds and builds despite the obvious wisdom in his suggestions. In the end, Wilkie takes the advice, and the result is a better, more popular novel.
Eventually, and by slow degrees, Wilkie’s jealousy descends into madness. As I’ve said, we are never sure which of his delusions are real. I would have liked some more explanations and follow up to certain things, certainly (Just what was in the servant’s stairs at Wilkie’s house? Some type of Lovecraftian horror? Or another delusion?). But in the end, that’s not what the book is about. Drood has far more in common with the movie Amadeus than with a horror novel. There were many moments in the book, such as the revision scene above, when I was reminded of the final moments of Amadeus: Mozart on his deathbed, composing another masterwork with baffling ease, while Salieri can only look on in awe and wonder. If you go into this book expecting The Terror II you’re bound to be disappointed. If you go in expecting Amadeus with writers instead of musicians—well, that’s exactly what it is.
Writing, like music, like all art, is mostly subjective. You can learn various rules, sure, but what makes people fall in love with a movie or a poem or a story or a painting? That is unknowable. Sometimes it can seem unfair. In the final pages of the novel comes what I consider the book’s most powerful scene. After Dickens has died, Wilkie rummages through some of Dickens old books, trying to prove to himself Dickens’ inferiority. He finds problems with characterization, plot, and more, but finally, in a passage in Bleak House, he comes face to face with the Charles Dickens the world saw and loved:
Dickens had gone on by having the fog in the harbor lift over Esther’s shoulder by writing, “these ships brightened, and shadowed, and changed…,” and I knew in that instant…merely passing over these few words in these short sentences, that I would never—not ever, should I live to be a hundred years of age and retain my faculties until the last moment of that life and career—that I would never be able to think and write like that.
The book was the style and the style was the man. And the man was—had been—Charles Dickens.
Simmons is a master at portraying the ugly side of human nature, and this ability is on full display in Drood. There is perhaps no human emotion worse than jealousy and the book is an excellent look at the hideous manifestations of that at once understandable and reprehensible feeling. In many friendships and professional relationships there's a very fine line between love and hate, and this is a book that explores that line wonderfully. Don’t go in expecting a horror story, and you just might find a lot to like.
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