[The Mutual Friend is Frederick Busch's] scrupulous recreation in novel form of Charles Dickens and those who attended him in his last years.

The novel begins in [the] 1867 period with Dickens's public readings in America, and the dinner with Longfellow figures in the early pages. "Begins" is a misleading word here, for Busch's admirable technique is anything but linear. With a firm control over his material—he is faithful to the recorded facts and intuitive with his inventions—he presents this account of the years leading up to Dickens's death, and its aftermath, from different points of view. He divides up the task among several narrators….

Each narrator unfolds a separate episode, as well as a separate relationship to the Chief, as he was called, and in so doing reveals facts and circumstances which foretell events leading up to the time of his death. This intent is clarified...