More Christmas Fiction

Here are some very nice Christmas related reads for you to enjoy.

You all know the story of Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, but did you know that he had a wife? Poet Carol Ann Duffy tells the story of Mrs Scrooge, and Posy Simmonds adds the charming illustrations.

The Times has a couple of very nice Christmas short stories, Arvind Adiga's Last Christmas in Bandra, while Rachel Johnson writes about a Notting Hill yummy mummy who unwraps the truth in Severely Gifted.

In the Telegraph Justine Picardie tells the tale of The Little Cigarette Girl, and Jane Gardam the story of The Virgins of Bruges.

But any thoughts of fiction at Christmas lead back to Dickens, the man who invented the holiday in the form in which we know it (with turkeys and trees and all that marvellous good will and merriment floating around). Michel Kenny in the Boston Globe looks at the circumstances which lead Dickens to create his Christmas classic (and in just six weeks!). You can read the full thing here and listen to it here. (Another nice piece about Dickens and Christmas by John Walsh appears in the Independent.)

Meanwhile Edward Champion at the Guardian has some great online reading suggestions to save you from an overdose on Christmas kitsch.

A very happy Christmas to you all!

Postscript (26/12/08) :

Let me add one more story : A House by the Sea by Helen Dumore appears in the Independent.

Graphic Gets Respectable!

This post is for Amir who dropped by the other day to leave a long list of must-read graphic fiction. (Am for sure learning lots from my blog readers!) As a literary form it had slipped beneath my radar, although I grew up on a diet of superhero and science fiction comics.

Alice O'Keeffe reports in the Observer that two of Britain's best known graphic novelists - Posy Simmonds (more of her work here) and Raymond Briggs have just been made fellows of the Royal Society of Literature. I've enjoyed the work of both "cartoonists" for years, and am so glad that they are being recognised.

Briggs says:

On the Continent, graphic novels have been as accepted as films or books for many years, but England has had a snobby attitude towards them. They've always been seen as something just for children ... When my Father Christmas was published in 1973, many people didn't consider a strip cartoon to be a real book at all. ... Cartoonists share some of the blame for the fact that their art has not been taken seriously. Too much of it has been superheroes socking people and semi-obscene stuff. But lately there has been much more work with a dignified, serious subject-matter. And as a genre it's increasingly commercially viable.

Update:

An article from Newsweek on the same theme.