Books: A tale of two Dickenses

The Snake-Oil Dickens Man by Ross Gilfillan, 4th Estate pounds 14.99

Charles Dickens is about to make his second tour of America, and the audiences and ticket touts are lining up in droves. Among them is Billy Talbot, an earnest young man in search of his father who, it has recently been revealed to him is none other than the great author himself. Ross Gilfillan's The Snake-Oil Dickens Man is the story of Billy's wayward pursuit of his illustrious kin, from a one-horse town in Missouri to the tenements and concert halls of New York. Born of a backwater prostitute and adopted by a good-hearted confidence man who makes a living pretending to be Dickens, Billy is a sort of Huck Finn meets Pip Pirrup in a rollicking tale of innocence lost.

When Dickens first visited America in 1842 he experienced both the adulation of a devoted reading public and the ire of nationalist newspapers outraged at his stance on American publishing piracy. As the US congress had yet to recognize British copyright law, he had reason to resent the great numbers of fans who showed up to greet him - they had all read unauthorized publications of his work for which he was not paid. In addition to this complaint, Dickens lamented American mercantilism and graft, their love of "smart-dealing" and the ever-present "black hand" of the press.

Ross Gilfillan lightly lampoons many of these themes. His snake-oil Dickens man takes the cheating of Dickens even further: he earns his bread by impersonating the author. Hope Scattergood performs readings in the towns that haven't made it onto Dickens's itinerary and hightails it with his takings before anyone finds him out. Prior to hitting on the "Dickens lay" Hope peddled everything from religion to "patent medicines'; snake- oil being one such remedy. Though Billy has moral doubts about such a career, Hope maintains, in true Dickensian fashion, that "the confidence man is an American hero. He's a measure of this nation's integrity."

Hope's forceful orations, fine clothes and practised accent make him the consummate hustler - not evil, just smart - and Gilfillan's Dickens- style narrative is injected with enough outlandish elements to make a fresh, lively read. As Billy's childhood alternated brutish treatment from a miscreant hotelman (who enslaved Billy's mother) and regular lessons from a former schoolteacher, Billy is well-acquainted with the Dickens oeuvre and with the art of the con.

But he is no less spellbound by Hope's oration as he "speeded like a train after halting for fuel; slowly he moved off, got up steam and was soon taking us rattling down the rails with him." Noting that this particular rendition of Great Expectations is showing signs of the performer's alcohol intake, Billy prays he is the only one who will realize that "Pip never bought bogus real estate on the Mississippi or that Estella never shot Bentley Drummle through the heart" nor did "Miss Havisham's groom finally show up with a huge bunch of red roses and fulsome apologies for being so dilatory." Nevertheless, Billy agrees to join forces with Hope as they head for the east coast: Billy looking for his alleged father, and Hope for the next scam.

The debasing of Boz and images of ignorant farmers responding "with a loud 'Hooroar!'" are a requisite part of the adventures of Billy and Hope, as are swindlers, prostitutes and corrupt politicians. If Dickens's American Notes provided a recipe for a novel caricaturing American naivete and vice, this, even more than Martin Chuzzlewit, is it, especially because Billy Talbot, as narrator, is an American success story. He "unleashed ruthless ambition and rose to the top like the scum in a pond". William Talbot's musings on the "unflagging pursuit of fortune and fame" and Hope's Clintonesque final soliloquy bring these nineteenth-century stereotypes firmly into the present.

Yet for all this, Ross Gilfillan is no Dickens, and while he has produced a charming, atmospheric first novel, the strength and presence of the characters falters by the end. This is more disappointing because the tale is so delightfully conceived. Billy should be the hero but Hope Scattergood hogs the stage and neither is really allowed to shine. Hope's brief moments of greatness, however, make Charles Dickens and his self- important manager loom like dampening spectres of legitimacy that constantly threaten to end the farce, and the fun. One can easily side with Billy Talbot in feeling that, whatever happened all those years ago between his mother and the real thing, she and Billy have had a much better time with the pirated version.