The Dickens Boy, Thomas Keneally
The Dickens Boy, Thomas Keneally
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

The Dickens Boy

Author: Thomas Keneally

Narrator: David Tredinnick

Unabridged: 14 hr 43 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/08/2022


Synopsis

The award-winning author of modern classics such as Schindler’s List and Napoleon’s Last Island is at his triumphant best with this “engrossing and transporting” (Financial Times) novel about the adventures of Charles Dickens’s son in the Australian Outback during the 1860s.

Edward Dickens, the tenth child of England’s most famous author Charles Dickens, has consistently let his parents down. Unable to apply himself at school and adrift in life, the teenaged boy is sent to Australia in the hopes that he can make something of himself—or at least fail out of the public eye.

He soon finds himself in the remote Outback, surrounded by Aboriginals, colonials, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women. Determined to prove to his parents and more importantly, himself, that he can succeed in this vast and unfamiliar wilderness, Edward works hard at his new life amidst various livestock, bushrangers, shifty stock agents, and frontier battles.

By reimagining the tale of a fascinating yet little-known figure in history, this “roguishly tender coming-of-age story” (Booklist) offers penetrating insights into Colonialism and the fate of Australia’s indigenous people, and a wonderfully intimate portrait of Charles Dickens, as seen through the eyes of his son.

About Thomas Keneally

Thomas Keneally began his writing career in 1964 and has published thirty-three novels since, most recently Crimes of the FatherNapoleon’s Last IslandShame and the Captives, and the New York Times bestselling The Daughters of Mars. He is also the author of Schindler’s List, which won the Booker Prize in 1982, The Chant of Jimmie BlacksmithGossip from the Forest, and Confederates, all of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written several works of nonfiction, including his boyhood memoir Homebush BoyThe Commonwealth of Thieves, and Searching for Schindler. He is married with two daughters and lives in Sydney, Australia.


Reviews

Goodreads review by George on November 17, 2024

I knew nothing about the lives of Charles Dickens's children, so naturally I had no idea that two of his sons went to Australia to seek their fortunes. This novel follows Edward, who leaves England as a teenager, and who has never read one of his famous father's books. This novel is readable and well......more

Goodreads review by Ann on April 18, 2020

I found this book lacking in depth. Plorn arrives in a strange country and, with one little hiccup, begins to be the success he never was in England. He seems to have no trouble adapting to the weather or harsh living conditions in the country he has been banished to. The relationship Alfred and Plor......more

Goodreads review by Sportyrod on May 30, 2020

Famous author father. Tenth son needs to become a man. Off to Australia you go. This was of course set in colonial times where Oz was seen as a land of opportunity albeit a tough one. Charles Dickens sent his sons away to become ‘men’. The protagonist is sent to Wilcannia, rural NSW to work on a farm......more

Goodreads review by Steve on November 20, 2023

Keneally can take characters and events from history and weave some amazing stories around them. In the late 1800s, rather than run the risk of his underachieving sons tarnishing his reputation at home, Charles Dickens sent two of them to Australia. This tale tells the imagined story of Edward, the te......more

Goodreads review by Candace on November 03, 2021

One of Charles Dickens' eight sons opines to another that the gov'ner, as they called him, sends his own children to the same backwaters that he sends his least favorite characters. Two of his sons are in Australia, while the others are scattered across India and Canada. Whas the gov'ner disappointe......more