Saw a very good program on the TV about him and thought I would start off, still post Zola, with something easier than 'The Narrow Road to the Deep North', if that is the right title.
This is an odd book – half about Charles Dickens, which interested me very little and the other half about the Franklin’s, British colonials in Tasmania who attempt, inter-alia, to civilise and convert (almost )into an English society girl an aboriginal girl who they trophy adopt.
The experiment is no more successful than Franklin’s subsequent attempt to traverse the North Sea Passage, about which by strange coincidence, there was a program on the TV while I was reading this (the only overt (and true) link with Dickens is that he was persuaded by Jane Franklin to scotch rumours of cannibalism amongst her husbands’s crewmen, although both John Franklin and Dickens share a predilection for young girls).
Good on colonialism in Tasmania but I couldn’t really see (or missed) the point of the book.
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