Francine Prose
Birthday:
April 1, 1947 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
Francine Prose was born on April 1, 1947 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. She is a writer, known for Masterpiece Theatre (1971), Submission (2017) and Household Saints (1993).
What do people mean when they call a novel 'Dickensian'? A large cast of vividly drawn characters, some of them grotesques with comically de...Show more »
What do people mean when they call a novel 'Dickensian'? A large cast of vividly drawn characters, some of them grotesques with comically descriptive names and odd tics of speech and behavior; a plucky orphan who overcomes a childhood blighted by humiliating poverty or simple lower-class misery; numerous and ingeniously interconnected subplots; panoramic shifts of location; a narrative that makes the reader finish each chapter eager to begin the next. But like 'Kafkaesque', 'Dickensian' is only a partial description of the writer's work. Often missing from so-called Dickensian novels are the aspects of Dickens - his originality, his intelligence, his witty and precise descriptions, the depth and breadth of his powers of observation, his cadenced, graceful language - that can temper the urgency of our impulse to keep reading with the desire to read passages aloud, preferably to another person. Show less «