Author : Elizabeth Gaskell
Publisher : eshelfbooks
A DARK NIGHT'S WORK, a short fiction novel, was written by Elizabeth Gaskell in 1863.
A Dark Night’s Work is my book selection for November keyword reading challenge. As you can read from the very brief description of the book, which I get from goodreads, this book is a short novel. I did a little research about this book and I found out that A Dark Night’s Work was first published in Charles Dickens’s magazine titled All the Year Round.
A Dark Night’s Work basically tells a story about Edward Wilkins, a lawyer who lives in a county. His wife died and left him with a daughter named Ellinor. He’s an heir of a successful lawyer and trained to be a lawyer. Apparently, Edward has an interest in art and leads an expensive lifestyle. He develops a drinking problem and spends more money than he can afford. As a result, he’s faced with several problems which ends in a ‘dark night’s work’.
This book is very gothic and has dark tone in it. We’ll see materialistic people with ambition and irresponsible adult which make us learn that every action has consequences. Even though for Ellinor, the consequences come in much harder way. Ellinor is a sweet and smart girl. She has a strong bond with her father because she lost her mother and sister at a young age. Her bond with her father makes her blind to her father faults. She has to face the consequences of her father’s actions, which in my opinion are too harsh.
In the last half part of the book, the story focuses on Ellinor. We’ll see how Ellinor’s life goes on after the tragedy. The thing that interests me most from this book is the connection between Ellinor and her father, and Ellinor with the family servant, Dixon. The only person who knows about the incident other than Ellinor and Edward is Dixon. In the end, Ellinor has to choose between her father and Dixon.
I got a free copy of this book in my eReader. If you want to read this book, you can get a copy of it from Project Gutenberg for free.
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