One of my favourite genres to read, if it is even its own genre, is books about books. As a literature lover, this soothes my soul and makes me very happy. So you can imagine a book with a Dickens character in its title was right up my street.
The Unlikely Escape or Uriah Heep, H.G. Parry
Themes: Fantasy, Books about Books, Adult, Science Fiction
Reading Format: Paperback
5 STARS
Thank you to Orbit Books UK for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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Let me start by saying what a treat of a book! Charley and his brother Rob are quite different, but the two leads in this book. Charley, the younger of the two, has a rather extraordinary ability though, he can bring the characters of books to life. I know we all like to think we breathe life into the books we read, but quite literally, Charley pulls them out of the page. He feels the passion of the words he reads and he pulls forward his own interpretations of the characters to come face to face with him.
This struck me initially as an adult version of Pages & Co, Tilly and the Bookwanderers, which also has the magical concept of book characters coming to life. We meet characters in The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep from Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing as well as works of Dickens, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl. Whilst this book focused mainly around Victorian literature and heavily on the works of Dickens, I didn’t feel left behind for not having read anything other than Great Expectations by Dickens. Instead, I felt invited into this world with Charley and Rob, I wanted to learn more about the characters. The writing spoke with such passion of the books mentioned, it made me want to read them all and I have presently bought a few stories from Arthur Conan Doyle.
“We should all strive to be the absolute version of something.”
This quote from the book sums up perfectly how I feel about this story. Words have great power, they can create cities, wars, love, they also create an escape. This book swirled me up in a flurry of magic, wonder and asking the question of which book characters I would most want to bring to life.
The drama and action in this book were written so powerfully, so epic, it was utterly fantastic. Seeing so many literary characters teaming up and fighting against the threat in this plot was so inspiring. I was reading along with classical music blaring in my headphones and that only added to my reading experience of the climax of this book. Also an honourable mention to the White Witch from the Narnia books who was a boss in this book. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the literary characters because I think it’s fun to discover them yourself, but she was a favourite of mine. White leather jacket, riding a motorbike, she was a brilliantly modernised version of C.S. Lewis’ devil incarnate.
Rob and Charley’s brotherly relationship was certainly tested a lot through this book. I enjoyed their dynamic and liked that this relationship was the focus of the book. Parry did an excellent job of displaying the reality of sibling disputes, protection and communications. Rob has an excellent, dry humour to him that is contrasted with Charley’s ability to take everything said quite literally. The two bounce off each other perfectly and were a delight to read about. Below is an excellent quote of some of the excellent lines in this book.
“Is that how he ended up in the hospital?” “Not directly. I think he’s just been doing far too much reading.”
Honestly, this book was just perfect. I can’t fault it. I’ve seen some reviews say the plot was a bit all over the place, but it’s a book about literary characters coming to life. Have you read Alice in Wonderland? Narnia? There sure is some nonsense in those books, so it makes sense for this book to have a plot that follows it. Overall though I thought this was very well written, structured and it was just completely captivating.
Buy a copy of The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep from Waterstones here.
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