Might mess around and reread soon

Ages ago, when I knew almost nothing about Charles Dickens, this was the book I always associated with him. I knew almost nothing about it, except it was about the French Revolution. Later I heard a few things, like the quote, "It is a far, far better thing that I do ..." and about Madame DeFarge and her knitting at the foot of the guillotine. So, I had a nodding acquaintance with it. But then I read Great Expectations, and A Christmas Carol, and those began to be the books I thought of for Dickens. David Copperfield, The Old Curiosity Shop.

But now I've finally read this, the book that was at the time his most successful, the book that is still considered by many to be his masterpiece. And you know what? It deserves the hype. Here are the usual Dickens Players: noble young men, venerable fathers, innocent angel women, weird servants with weird names and weirder habits. But the story. Oh, the story! Heartbreaking. Tender. Complex and yet deeply satisfying.

And I was not prepared for the ending. Not. One. Bit.

Despite caveats, I am awarding full recognition. There are such long stretches of gorgeous writing here. What an astonishing writer Dickens can be when he keeps away from cloying sentiment, his hobbyhorse.

I kept girding for the saccharine heroine (à la Little Dorrit). She never appeared but the novelist hews closest to his chief indulgence in Chapter 17: "One Night."

Here young Lucie, who has rescued her father from Louis XVI's Bastille, speaks with him — years after their safe return to England — about her upcoming marriage to Charles Darnay, a Frenchman also involved in the father's rescue.

Lucie in her immoderate selflessness is guilty about sidelining her father, who until now has received all her personal attentions after his great suffering. So here father and daughter expatiate at wearying length on their love for one another. This goes on for many pages until Lucy is convinced her father won't hold her marriage against her. In fact, he welcomes it.

Quite a slog when you consider how the preceding and succeeding chapters fly by. But it is a small inconvenience compared to what remains.

3.5**** rounded up!!

”It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

Oh Carton! This book was sad, tragic and bleak... which is expected from the French Revolution.

This book is set in London and in Paris with the build up to the French Revolution and during this terror of blood reign. Dickens explores the terror, depravity and madness of this period and there is so much about the Revolution that I did not know about. The notes at the back of this edition were super useful!

Immersed into this terror are the lives of Dicken’s characters: Doctor Manette, his daughter Lucie, Charles Darnay, Sydney Carton, Mr Lorry, etc. One of the characters who is explored greatly and had an impact on me was that of Doctor Manette- who at the start of the book is a wrongful prisoner of Bastille. With this character, Dicken’s was able to explore how corrupt the nobles were/those in power before the Revolution, and detail the impacts/PTSD prisoners would suffer as a result of this imprisonment.

He also details the change the Revolution bought, with thorough bloodshed of the guillotine to being beheaded on “suspect” laws- despite many victims being innocent. All of these events were told through the eyes of our MC’s.

My heart was aching by the end of this book. There were twists and turns, and some hope to be had in this novel.

Despite thoroughly enjoying my first Dicken’s novel (that i read myself), I wasn’t fully immersed into the book until around the 200 page mark. In addition, I found this a bit harder to work through (maybe as it is a “classic” and I haven’t read one in ages- takes a while for me to get into the language), so I am not too sure I understood all of it 100% of the time.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

Another classic down! The copy of this book that I read I have owned since middle school/high school – so it has been with me for about 25 years! I figured it was about time to get to it.

The book is divided into three parts and when I got to the end of part two (which is a little over 200 pages into the book), I was sure I was going to give the book 2 stars. Not that I was kidding myself that Dickens would be an easy read, but I had to force myself back into the book every day because I knew it would end up being a chore.

Then I hit part three.

It is all worth it for part three! Part three by itself is 5 stars all the way – so I averaged out my overall rating to 4 stars. If you are struggling with the beginning like I did – don’t give up! I hope that you find the ending as interesting and engaging as I did.

Also, thanks again to Shmoop for helping me along the way with chapter summaries. I didn’t have to read a summary of every chapter, but there were a few that had me scratching my head so it was very helpful having a place I could go for help.

Finally, while I started my review with one of the most famous beginning quotes in literature, I didn’t realize that the famous quote that ends this book was from Dickens. I will end my review with it – but I am not marking it with a spoiler, so if you want to avoid knowing what it is, don’t look down!

*******************

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

A painful beast of a book. It took me five attempts to get past page one hundred, and when I finally did break that barrier I pressed on until the very end so that I didn't have to suffer ever again.

Dickens is a problem for me. I admit it freely.

There was a time, many years ago, when I was a fan. I read Great Expectations for the first time in grade four, and I was in love with the book and Dickens. And I imagine that some part of my social consciousness, which wasn't a gift from my parents, was planted with the seeds of Dickens.

Over the years, though, Dickens and I have grown apart.

I don't mean that I have "outgrown" him in any sort of condescending manner. It's not the sort of thing I expect anyone else to do, nor is it something that I blame fully on Dickens. No, we've grown apart as many couples do when one person changes through life and experience and the other remains constant.

I have become a radical over the years, and Dickens...well, he's still as bourgeois left as ever, and we're not compatible any more. He venerates the comforts of the middle class; he expounds the virtues of law and order and charity; he attacks the indignities of the abuses of power but only offers imaginary methods for overcoming them, mythologizing the bourgeoisie's ability to overthrow the things that ail us; he vilifies those who seek more radical solutions; and, whether he admits it or not, he still believes in the superiority of nobility and noble blood.

So when he starts to attack the revolutionaries in Paris and uses it to illustrate the "superiority" of civilized English behavior, when Dickens' moral soapbox weighs heavier than his plot, I begin to tune out of his lecture, and A Tale of Two Cities makes me increasingly angry from page to page.

I recognize Dickens' talent. I still love his prose. And I get why people love this book, and maybe even why you do, kind reader, but I can't stand it (and I am finding it increasingly difficult to like any of his work anymore).

I may burn this someday. But I have fully annotated the version I own and while I can burn the words of others (it's the radical in me), my lovely inner narcissist simply can't burn words of my own (unless it is for catharsis). So A Tale of Two Cities will likely survive on my shelf until I die, mocking me from its high perch in my office, whispering that a catharsis that may never come just may be necessary.

n  A KNIT OF TWO TALESn

Reading Dickens’s approach to historical fiction, at first I could not help but remember Romola, which I read recently. And even if Romola seemed to have more of a Victorian than a Florentine Renaissance tone, the story and the context were very nicely woven together.

While with A Tale I felt I as reading two separate stories. One was a the result of conscientious research, and Dickens in his Preface acknowledges Carlyle’s wonderful book, and the other was a more melodramatic tale with Gothic overtones. The two meanings of the word historia separated: history and story.

May be it was because Dickens was dealing with a convulsive period that was still too close to him and his contemporaries. Its threats must have resonated with a greater echo after the 1848 revolutions that again swept through France as well as other European countries. When he wrote his novel only a decade had passed since that latest wave of violence and political turmoil. These more recent revolutions must have had the effect of a magnifying glass when Dickens read and reread Carlyle’s study, study which had, however, been written before, in 1837. One can certainly feel Dickens alarm at the dangers that loom over humanity. His horror came first, and then he tried to horrify his readers.

And yet, as my reading proceeded, I began to feel how these two axis or needles were pulling out something together. And I think it is Dickens excellent writing, with his uses of repetitions, or anaphora; his complex set of symbols—and I am beginning to become familiar with the Dickens iconography; his idiosyncratic mixture of humour and drama; his use of alliteration and onomatopoeia; his extraordinary development of images—and I think this novel has some of the best I have read by him; and his ability to sustain a positive core within a great deal of drab, that succeeds in making those two needles knit something coherent and consistent.

And indeed my favourite image was the Knitting, which Dickens develops throughout the novel, with all its mythological weight--that binds the threads of fate and volition, of patience and disquiet, of love and hatred--, which became for me also the knitting of the writer. The periodic and steady rhythm of Knit and Purl produced with threads of words, meshing in the melodrama and the emotions, the varying colours with their lights and shadows, increasing or decreasing the episodes with literary tricks such as adding a new thread or character or knitting two stiches in one go by solving a mystery. And this he achieved by handling with shrewd dexterity his two needles of ‘story’ and ‘history’, his two tales.


So, as I came to the end I had to admit that , yes, the Tale of Two Tales has woven for me a magnificent novel. There has been somewhat of a 'Resurrection' in my reading too.

كيف ساختزل جمال هذه الرواية في كلمات قليلة و مراجعة مختصرة.(لانني اسمع نقد مراجعتك طويلة

وقتی تصمیم گرفتم سراغ یه کتاب دیگه از چارلز دیکنز برم، دلم یه داستان کامل از میون زندگی آدم‌های سال‌ها قبل رو میخواست. یه رمان کلاسیک که وسطش از اضافه گویی شخصیتا و احساسات عجیب غریبشون اذیت نشم. و خب این کتاب دقیقا همون چیزی بود که میخواستم.
یه داستان جذاب از بطن حوادث انقلاب کبیر فرانسه که از لندن شروع میشه و در پاریس به پایان میرسه. بنظرم دیکنز قبل از هر چیز قصه گوی ماهریه. واقعیت و تلخی جامعه رو جوری از لابه‌لای زندگی شخصیتاش تو صورتت می کوبونه که بعد از تموم شدن کتاب دلت میخواد برگردی و دوباره تمام تلخیش رو‌ تجربه کنی. واقعیت آشنای تمامی انقلاب هایی که اتفاق میفتن، تکرار میشن و به بیراهه میرن...

Maybe 4.5. I never know how to feel about A Tale of Two Cities, because the bulk of the novel doesn’t quite live up to other Dickens books for me, but my goodness, what an ending.

Poco se puede decir de este clásico que no se haya dicho ya mil veces. Escrito en 1859, es una de las dos obras de ficción histórica que nos dejó este gran autor. En sus páginas se describen tanto Londres como Paris, en la convulsa época de la Revolución Francesa, intentando mostrar, bajo su punto de vista, la causa de dicha Revolución. Se dice que Dickens visitó Paris en repetidas ocasiones para inspirar su obra, a través de los restos históricos que fue encontrando en sus viajes.
Yo creo que lo de menos es la narración concerniente a los personajes, el abogado Sydney Carton o el supuesto espía francés Charles Darnay, o Lucie, o el resto de los que desfilan por sus páginas. Es simplemente una obra que conviene leer en algún momento de tu vida. Quizás le falte una mayor profundización de los personajes, y algo de la ironía que desprende en “Grandes Esperanzas”, para mí su mejor obra. La primera vez la leí en castellano, y no hace mucho que la releí en inglés, aunque no es una lectura fácil. También hay adaptaciones en un inglés más comprensible y moderno, pero, si se puede, conviene leerlo en su versión oficial. Ha dejado pasajes que permanecen en la memoria colectiva, sobretodo en la cultura anglosajona, y también adaptaciones cinematográficas memorables. Si eres lector de buena literatura, no esperes más y comienza a leerla. No es una novela que enganche desde sus primeras páginas, pero el esfuerzo merece la pena.

Most satisfying ending in the English language.

Yes, the last line is a classic ("It is a far, far better thing ..."), concluding, in astonishingly concise language (for Dickens), the peace and redemption of the story's most poignant romantic hero. But this novel delivers such a gratifying experience because there are, in fact, many characters who cover significant emotional ground in their journey to love one woman as best they can.

Lucie's father battles his way back from madness under the gentle protection of his daughter. Lucie's childhood nursemaid evolves from a comical stereotype to an embattled force to be reckoned with. Lucie's husband's well-meaning (if bland) n  noblesse obligen culminates in -- not his hoped-for heroic moment, but a moment of quiet dignity that is most moving for its humility. Even Lucie's banker reaches dizzying heights of heroic accomplishment when Dickens appoints the quiet businessman the vehicle for an entire family's escape from the guillotine.

It is true that Lucie herself engages the reader less than her brutal counterpart -- the broken but terrifying Madame Defarge -- is able to, as modern readers are less moved by the swooning heroines who populate the period's "literature of sensibility." But we can certainly respond to Dickens' powerful and vivid claim: love is not only what makes us human, it is what allows us to be, at times, superhuman.

And when Sydney Carton, in equal parts love and despair, tells Lucie that "there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you" ... ?

I go to pieces. Every damn time.