My first memory of the work of Charles Dickens is suitably strange.
The parish priest used come in to do dramatised readings of "The Pickwick Papers". Sam Weller skating brought the house (a gang of seven year olds) down. I smiled politely, as far as I can remember and wondered, not for the first time, at the strangeness of adults.
Dickens and caricature continued to puzzle rather than entertain for years, but finally I came to accept that particularly English cast of mind and all its crazy alleyways and foibles. Every Irish person seems to be able to chat for hours about the various characters and while remaining strange, Dickens has been assimilated without too much pain.
The ghost stories are very much within the celtic and gothic tradition.
They are seriously frightening...
"http://minu.me/3bmh"
"The Signal Man" (which I always think of as "The Signal Box" due to the looming presence of that edifice throughout the story) leads the reader on a tightrope of suspense.
Not for the faint of heart...
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