A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens. HarperCollins (2013). 144 pages.
It is such a heartwarming book. The plot is simple but so touching. The story is about a greedy, cold-hearted old man, Ebenezer Scrooge, who was a social outcast, and always refused to give others a hand.
It began with the visit of a ghost, Scrooge's dead business partner. The ghost warned him that he would be haunted by three spirits of Christmas: Past, Present and Future. The spirit of Christmas Past showed Scrooge's memory how he gradually changed from a good-natured boy to that kind of man. It was 'time' that washed his kindness away and froze his heart into the block solid of ice. However, I could see his cold heart had slowly melted during the visit of three spirits.
This story made me think about when I was young, questioning myself if I have forgotten something important on the path of growing up. Along with this, it is beautifully written; it attracted me since the opening, bringing me to other Dickens' works.
This is one of my favorite character descriptions:
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
