David Copperfield

"It is, yes. David becomes a writer, and is successful. But it’s more about the opening chapters. Just before he wrote David Copperfield , he wrote what is called an ‘autobiographical fragment,’ which he gave to his friend Forster. Forster later incorporated it into his biography. That fragment is really the opening chapters of David Copperfield . “That famous Victorian imperative: “Make ’em laugh; make ’em cry; make ’em wait.” It does all that in that spades.” That’s how we know about his prison episode, when his father was in prison for debt. As happened in those days, the whole family would go to prison with you — all except the two oldest children, Charles and his sister. Charles is put to work in a blacking warehouse, pasting labels on bottles of shoe blacking. It was the most terrible experience for him because he thought he’d been abandoned. He felt completely abandoned. You would, wouldn’t you? He was 12 and he just thought, ‘This is it.’ That trauma comes across extremely vividly in David Copperfield . But it’s not just about that: it’s about that whole experience of the child growing up, the idyll with your mother. Then she remarries because his father dies, and she remarries this monster, Mr Murdstone. The book has got some of the most wonderful characters in it, the nastiest villains and the most charming villains, like Steerforth, who is completely charming and yet awful. That famous Victorian imperative: “Make ’em laugh; make ’em cry; make ’em wait.” It does all that in that spades. It’s no surprise I would choose it because it’s consistently listed among the top novels of all time. Are you enjoying it? I think a lot of people do. His critical reception has changed over the years. During his lifetime, people liked the earliest stuff like The Pickwick Papers , which is very funny. I don’t find that so funny. The later ones are the darker ones. David Copperfield is right in the middle of his career. Freud gave it to his fiancée. It’s about the workings of memory. It has these retrospective chapters, where he looks back. To me, that’s absolutely fascinating. I think it’s also a very moving book: about how he goes through life, the damage we do, how we grow up. The chapter, for instance, about David’s first drunken outing. He’s drunk in London and goes to the theatre. It’s so funny. Everybody goes through it, you have to drink too much at some point in your life, don’t you? — to know how much you can take. So he goes through those phases, with a great sense of good humour. Yes, he reread it before he wrote Great Expectations because he didn’t want to repeat himself. He said he found it very affecting, which I still do. I remember defrosting a freezer once and I was listening to it on the radio. Tears were dripping off my nose into the freezer. It still moves me. When his mother dies it is really sad, that sense of loss and you have to move on. It is a book about survival, but it is also about what we lose."