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    The Baker's Tale: Ruby Spriggs and the Legacy of Charles Dickens
    The Baker's Tale: Ruby Spriggs and the Legacy of Charles Dickens
    The Baker's Tale: Ruby Spriggs and the Legacy of Charles Dickens
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Baker's Tale: Ruby Spriggs and the Legacy of Charles Dickens

    Written by Thomas Hauser

    Narrated by James Langton

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    An evocative historical novel that explores the rising influence of Dickens’s work in mid-19th-century London through the journey of a young woman’s struggle against poverty and injustice.

    In the winter of 1836, a young journalist named Charles Dickens held an infant in his arms. Only eight months of age, Ruby Spriggs was living under the most deplorable conditions that existed in London. Crushing poverty seemed her only future.

    Through the intervention of kind patrons, the child blossoms into a young woman instilled with a love of learning and books. But the forces that Dickens fought against for most of his life threaten to destroy her.

    At the heart of The Baker’s Tale is Ruby Spriggs; Edwin Chatfield, the young man who would be her lover; Alexander Murd, the scheming coal baron who would destroy them; Abraham Hart, a dwarf who befriends Ruby in a faraway land; and Octavius Joy, a 19th-century philanthropist cut from unique cloth.

    Meticulously researched and masterfully told, The Baker’s Tale recreates the voice of beloved author Charles Dickens in gorgeous prose brimming with the atmosphere of historical London. It's a gripping tale of obsession, corruption, hope, and love instilled with the unequaled passion of Dickens’s social conscience.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateDec 15, 2015
    ISBN9781511308137
    The Baker's Tale: Ruby Spriggs and the Legacy of Charles Dickens
    Author

    Thomas Hauser

    Thomas Hauser is the author of forty-seven books on subjects ranging from professional boxing to Beethoven. His first novel Missing was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award, and was the basis for the Academy-Award-winning film starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. He wrote Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times – the definitive biography of the most famous man on earth – which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Hauser has written extensively about the sport and business of professional boxing and has published articles in in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications. He is currently a consultant to HBO and lives in Manhattan.

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    Reviews for The Baker's Tale

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      Ruby Spriggs lives a precarious life in Dicken’s London with her uncle, Christopher until they encounter Antonio, a baker and Octavius Joy, a man of considerable wealth and even more considerable heart. Octavius had helped Antonio open the bakery and now Antonio finds Christopher a job at another bakery run by Marie Wells who recently lost her son. Eventually, Ruby meets Edwin Chatfield and the two fall hopelessly in love. Unfortunately, Edwin’s employer Alexander Murd and his snobbish and cruel daughter, Isabella have other plans for Edwin and hatch a plan to break the two up. If Thomas Hauser didn’t say that he based his novel The Baker’s Tale on a comment by Charles Dickens, his admiration for the great writer would still shine through in this, his latest novel. He does a marvelous job of recreating not only Dicken’s style of writing but his use of caricature and subject matter. Like in any good Dickens novel, Ruby Spriggs is a beautiful and innocent orphan, Edwin Chatfield is handsome, kind, and good, Octavius has a heart of gold and Murd et fille are unrelentingly and wonderfully smarmy and underhanded. And, of course, there are the same unlikely coincidences and lucky happenstances that fill Dickens’ pages and which will eventually lead to the undoing of the evildoers after much suffering from our hero and heroine. The one thing, though, that is missing is the humour and endearing eccentricities that marked Dickens’ books and helped to make his criticisms of 19th c. society less biting and, thus, more easily acceptable to the upper classes while satisfying his huge audience among the working class. Fortunately, The Baker’s Tale also lacks Dickens’ verbosity so that this lack didn’t interfere too much with my enjoyment of the novel. This is a fun story, well-written and with interesting characters. If you are a fan of Charles Dickens, this one’s definitely for you.