Years of teaching this novel to teenagers never dimmed my thrill in reading it — if anything, I grew to love it more every time I watched kids gasp aloud at the revelations! Critics are divided on its place in the Dickens canon, but the ones who think it an inferior work are simply deranged. It has everything: dark deeds, revolution, madness, love, thwarted love, forgiveness, revenge, and a stunning act of self-sacrifice. And melodrama! Oh, how Dickens loved melodrama, but in A Tale of Two Cities it reaches truly grand proportions.

It’s the ultimate mystery novel: characters act strangely, but always for a reason. Miscellaneous people drift in and out, but they’re not truly miscellaneous — you just have to wait to see how they’re connected. And like any good mystery, the payoff at the end is worth the time it takes to get there...and what a payoff! Dickens is a master of the type of narration that simultaneously moves forward and back in time. In other words, strategically placed revelations from the past inform the present and shape the future. The brilliant timing both of his hints and of the actual revelations is a bonus field of study. Merely the drama of the dark past and its impact on the “here and now” story is thrilling enough. Plus, A Tale of Two Cities is a profoundly moral story, with themes of vengeance versus forgiveness, sins of the fathers being visited on the children, resurrection and rebirth, and the possibility of redemption.

Είναι η πρώτη φορά που διαβάζω Ντίκενς. Η γραφή, η λυρικότητα της και αυτή η λεπτή του ειρωνεία, μου άρεσε πολύ. Οι περιγραφές των φρικαλέων γεγονότων που έλαβαν χώρα κατα τη διάρκεια της Γαλλικής Επανάστασης ώρες ώρες ανατριχιαστικές και η ατμόσφαιρα υποβλητική. Τις τελευταίες 200 σελίδες δε, ξενύχτησα διαβάζοντας τες. Καιρό είχα να το κάνω αυτό! Το τέλος με συγκίνησε και με άφησε με πολλά συναισθήματα.
Πολύ δυνατό και αληθινό βιβλίο και δεν το περίμενα!
Στο μέλλον σίγουρα θα διαβάσω κι άλλα δικά του!

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...". The opening line says all that is needed to be said about the book. The time was worst, for it was tainted with hatred, violence, and vengeance. The time was also the best because there were love and compassion which endured it all.
The only historical novel that I've read of Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities moved me like none other. I can still feel the effect of the suspense and tension even when writing the review a few days later.

Set on the backdrop of France before and after the French Revolution, Dickens weaves a sensitive and sympathetic tale on all those affected while laying down the grounds which caused the frenzy. Dickens's historical portrayal is balanced and impartial. He shows what lead to the uprise of the peasants so brutally against the king and aristocracy. They were suppressed and were treated no better than animals. When people are so treated like beasts for a long time, it is no wonder that they would turn beasts eventually. That is what happened with them and Dickens is full of sympathy and empathy. But the reign of terror that followed exercised more than retributive justice. Like the bloodthirsty vampires, it hunted the innocents whose only crime was being of aristocratic blood. Dickens boldly exposes this monstrous side as well. He doesn't judge the frenzied Republic, nor condemn it, but he compares the action to a season of pestilence where some will have a secret attraction to the disease. In short, Dickens shows the abuse of power by both aristocrats and the republicans equally.

The story is one of the warmest of Charles Dickens. Witty and bold would be my description of Dickens's writing, and it may extend to being sympathetic. But I wouldn't have associated warmth with his writing. So it seems I still haven't fully comprehended him. The story drew me in from its opening. Though it had a bit of a disorganized structure and some repetitive writing, it was a solid four-star for me. The storyline was beautiful irrespective of the brutality and my nervous tension.

The characters, being few (another surprise for a Dickens book), it was easy to keep close contacts with them all. I've read many reviews of the book where it was said that they disliked Lucy Manette, so I went into the read with a prejudiced mind. But to my surprise, I liked her from the start. I also liked Charles Evremond, Dr. Manette, and Sydney Carton. I felt that all of them were victims, and were full of sympathy. The latter, however, rose to the heights of a hero at the end, and without prejudice, I believe Sydney Carton is the noblest hero that ever graced classical literature for giving his life to keep a life dear to the woman he loves. While I'm at the characters, I must say a word about the villain of the story. It is none other than Madame Defarge - a sinister woman - a sworn enemy of the aristocratic Evremond family (with reasons of course), but who displays a disproportionate propensity for vengeance. Charles Dickens seems to have surpassed Dumas there, for Madam Defarge surpassed Milady de Winter of The Three Musketeers in her villainy.

The book was a solid four-star as I already mentioned until I reached the final few chapters. Those few chapters took me through such a bittersweet journey that my rating jumped up another star and complemented the book with a firm five star.

Quick plot synopsis -


Set against the backdrop of the famous French Revolution, it is a tale of the cities of London and Paris. Mr. Jarvis Lorry (confidential clerk at Tellson's Bank) is travelling to meet Lucie Manette (a ward of Tellson's Bank), to inform her that she isn’t an orphan. They travel together to meet her father in Paris, Doctor Manette (a Parisan doctor), her father, is released from Bastille after 18 years. Currently he is housed in the Defarges' wine-shop, has lost his memory, but starts to regain it upon meeting his daughter and is transported back to London. Post 5 years of this episode, Charles Darnay (French emigrant to England) is accused of a charge of providing English secrets to the French. Another remarkably similar-looking Sydney Carton (a London lawyer), helps in Darnay’s acquittal. Lucie Manette has three suitors- Darnay, Carton, and Stryver (another London lawyer with colossal ego), but she ends up marrying Charles Darnay! On the wedding day, Darnay divulges to his father-in-law about his connection with the French nobleman family. Meantime, in France, Darnay’s uncle, Monseigneur, has been murdered on charges of crime again the French poor people. Darnay is imprisoned in Paris as a nobleman. Doctor Manette, Lucie, and her child all travel to Paris to save Darnay, but in a course of dramatic events, Madam Defarges(the ringleader of the Saint Antoine female revolutionaries , with a nickname "vengeance") makes a strong charge against him in court, Darnay is sentenced to death.

Most heart-rending twist for me, the epitome of selfless love is when-

When the similar-looking Sydney Carton all the way travels to Paris, on account of his selfless love for Lucie Manette, to sacrifice his life to save her husband’s life. Carton gets the information that Defarges are planning to kill Lucie and her child. Using influence he even arranges for the Manettes to leave Paris safely along with Darnay. Alas, Carton dies on behalf of Darnay (epitome of love………)my stomach jumped to my heart, and my heart leapt into my throat…all my organs displaced and shuddered and welled ☹
===============================================
My views –

The sinister Madame Defarge, with incessant propensity for vengeance, has outgrown all the villainy that I have read so far in any novel. She is emblematic of VENGEANCE AND MALICE!

There are many themes talked about, but what enticed me majorly were around resurrection and family, apart from the atrocities during the French Revolution and projection of the struggle of classes, tainted with violence and hatred.

The striking theme of resurrection, Lucie’s father’s memory recovery, Sydney’s sacrifice of his life to save Charles and family, is analogous to Jesus’s sacrifice!

The importance of the family has been threaded uniformly throughout. Given the centre stage!
From Lucie’s trip to Paris for the union with the long-lost father, to the lamentations of Charles Darney upon being sentenced to death, all more concerned about family than himself. The final nail in the coffin was the sacrifice of Carton(who is not connected to the family, without kinship!), just for the selfless love for Lucie and to protect her family.
While writing this brief, my heart is welling with tears!!!!!!!!!

The majestic opening with the contrasting lines to the profound impactful ending, this classic is an evergreen work of vengeance and love , family and sacrifice!

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

No one can sail through the last chapter “The footsteps die out forever” without a heavy heart, without sobbing, without an emotional sadness. The last chapter is the final embellishment of sacrifice and tragedy. Sydney Carton is executed at the guillotine along with other French prisoners, and Charles Dickens closes the chapter with a hypothetical speech on behalf of Carton and marks an end to this tragic tale. The ending melodramatic speech was analogous to the sacrifice of Jesus for the mankind!

This book cannot be given any finite stars…it is an epic laden with infinite stars, of the Dickensian epoch !

“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.”

NB- This book , like most of the other Dickens’ work cannot be savoured in one stretch, but gradually. It is one of the most emotionally painful novels I have ever savoured ! It is melting…..

A Tale of Two Cities is the best-known work of historical fiction by the first classical English writer I have read and loved. A couple of strong reviews convinced me to spend some time with Dickens and allow him to regale me with a good yarn set against the background of the French Revolution during the Victorian era. My aversion to history as a subject in school has compelled me to turn to good historical fiction for information about the significant past, and Dickens did not disappoint.

A social critic of his time, Dickens provided an outstanding documentation of the French Revolution. He rendered a vivid portrayal of the heinous oppression of the lower classes, the hatred that simmered, brewed, and finally took Paris by storm, the guillotine that served as the ultimate instrument of vengeance, and the copious shedding of blood for which no human trespass could be atoned. I have to admit that reading Dickens is no walk in the park. His style of writing is dense and elaborate; some may even find it turgid and longwinded. Three chapters into the story and I almost wanted to quit England and Paris. Yet, there were scenes so tangibly described I saw them vividly in my mind’s eye and I knew that for these gems alone, it would be worthwhile to persevere. A memorable scene was the wine shop on a day when a cask of wine was accidently spilled and the people gathered to scoop up pools of the unexpected bounty that were dammed by the uneven stones. Picture this: "The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes." There was a playful celebratory mood in this scene but it poignantly foreshadowed the carnage to follow: "The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.”

A Tale of Two Cities is a tale not just about England and France but also a tale about the two selves that are inherent in several of the key characters. Dr. Manette, was an eminent French doctor, a quiet thinking man who at his best served the poor and sickly. Eighteen years of wrongful incarceration in the Bastille reduced him to a traumatized wreck who took up shoemaking to cope with his losses. Madam Defarge, wife of the wine shop owner first impressed as a disarming woman who sat behind the wine counter merrily knitting; but she was at her core a fiery gun- and dagger-wielding revolutionary incapable of mercy. The character that moved me the most was Sydney Carton, a junior barrister, who came across as morose, brooding, and unapproachable. He was a bit like a durian – all thorny on the outside but soft on the inside. Carton had a magnanimity that can make you weep. He knew that his love for Dr. Manette’s daughter (Lucie) was hopeless; all he asked was that she ‘would think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you.’ Dickens, being the master storyteller that he was, did not allow Carton to forget this pledge he made, and by the time the novel ended, I had to hold back tears on Carton’s account.

A Tale of Two Cities, in my view, is about the struggle between good and evil. It is manifested in the unimaginable suffering that the aristocrats imposed on the poor and lowly, the prevalent social injustice that bred resentment, hatred, and hardness of heart. It is frightening how the oppressed became the oppressor and spared no thought for innocent folks whose gall they themselves had tasted. It is also displayed in the nobility of those who were willing to make personal sacrifices for the betterment of their kinsmen, to take up arms for a just cause, and to push for change. The challenge for the characters in the two cities was in knowing when to stop the fervor to do what they perceived to be right and just while traversing the slippery slope where good tended toward evil.

A Tale of Two Cities reminds me again why Dickens is not a good but a great novelist.

A far, far better historical thriller...


Dirk Bogarde as Sydney Carton in the 1958 film version.

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...’ begins Charles Dickens’ thrilling novel set in England and France during the turbulent years of the French Revolution. It tells the story of the return from London to Paris in 1792 of Charles Darnay, the Marquis of Evremonde, an aristocrat who had renounced his title and privileges, to help a forlorn servant in his former household. The lives of all those around Darnay - his wife Lucie, her father Doctor Manette, the lawyer Sydney Carton and spy Barsad - become bound into the ensuing intrigue and danger.

Dickens describes so well the wild, fickleness of the mob gathered for Darnay’s trial at the Conciergerie, and the sense of evil abroad in Paris at night as the people sharpen their weapons on a bloody grindstone in the St Germain courtyard of Tellson’s Bank. The callousness of the aristocracy is accounted for too, as a relative of Darnay’s ploughs over a child in his carriage and horses and tosses a few coins out of the window in ‘compensation’.

The book details how social injustice and the abuse of power led to a merciless vengeance on the aristocratic class. Personifying it is the Republican ringleader, Madame Defarge, who knits, mechanically adding the names to the register for vengeance at her wine shop with other revolutionaries: they who refer to each other in code as ‘Jaques’. “Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop, but don't tell me,” she says, as the ‘Reign of Terror’ rises to its excesses.

Whilst reading the novel on a recent trip to Paris, I felt able to enter through its pages into the city’s history. The dark iron keys from the Bastille fortress lay in a glass cabinet at the Carnavalet Museum, and the paintings there depict scenes from the period vividly in oil. At the Conciergerie were the straw-floored cells where suspects were kept before being brought for trial at the Revolutionary Tribunal upstairs. Queen Marie Antionette’s cell is left as it is thought to have been. At the ‘corner of last goodbyes’ in the women’s courtyard, the condemned waited for the tumbrils to take them to the Place de la Concorde - the losers in the ‘lottery of Sainte Guillotine’.

‘A Tale of Two Cities’, a reference point for my own novel ‘The Silencer’, sweeps towards a tense climax and the central act of Sydney Carton’s self-sacrifice for the good of Lucie Manette and her family. As Carton walks through the streets of Paris and lingers by the River Seine contemplating all the faults and mistakes in his own life, the words of Christ rise within him, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even though he is dead, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die’. And so the famous words ascribed to Sydney Carton as he ascends the scaffold in his final moments are: “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.” Ce est un livre superbe!

By the reviewer:
n  n

The Most Dickensian Novel, and the Least Dickensian Novel, …

… his skinniest and yet his most fleshed-out fantasy, his most universal and his most personal book. That’s pretty much what can be said about Dickens’s second historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities, which was published in 1859. Frankly, when I was re-reading this bi-metropolitan tale, I did not have the feeling that great expectations were lying ahead of me, for my first encounter with the novel lots of years ago left me mildly disappointed. This was simply not the Dickens I adored: Where was the abundance in sub-plots that would by and by be woven together by the untiring Inimitable loom? Where were the Mrs. Gamps, the Micawbers, the Captain Cuttles, Silas Weggses, where was Sam Weller? (Okay, we have Miss Pross, but few and far between are her appearances in the novel). Where was all that vastness that we associate with Dickens?

Maybe, I was just too much impressed with his longer novels to see, because now, 25 years later – what a terrible thing to realize that it has taken me a quarter of a century to rediscover this novel, and that I am already so old as to be able to look back on … ah, let’s leave it at that – 25 years later, I have finally come to appreciate the merits of a novel which I would rank among Dickens’s finest achievements. At an usually blistering pace, for Dickens, it tells its story of hatred and vengeance, hopes lost and re-gained, and human sacrifice. Admittedly, this kind of summary could do for almost any good Victorian novel (and maybe also for some of the Brontës’ books), and therefore here’s the story in a nutshell. Do we need a spoiler warning for a more than 150-year old classic novel?

In 1775, the French physician Dr. Manette, who was imprisoned on the grounds of a lettre de cachet, an arbitrary warrant obtained by a minion of the French monarch, is released from prison and taken to London by his old friend (and business partner) Mr. Lorry. Due to his mind-shattering experience of twenty years of incarceration, Dr. Manette is a physical and mental wreck but by and by, he is brought back to life again by the care and love of his daughter Lucie. Lucie falls in love with Charles Darnay, a descendant of the noble house of Evremonde, who has, however, severed his ties with his family because he was disgusted with the social injustices and abuses his family (and French nobility in general) brought about the French people. When Darnay is tried for espionage, it is Sydney Carton, his lawyer’s dogsbody, and also a doppelgänger of Darnay, who manages to obtain his acquittal. Carton may be Darnay’s spitting image as far as looks are concerned but his outlook on life is fundamentally different: Although he was a gifted youth, he somehow never succeeded in making good use of his potential because he never seemed to care, and now he is a jaded and cynical young old man, given to drink even more excessively than it was usual in those days. It is Lucie, who brings back to life his better nature, and yet he knows that it is too late to reform, and that Lucie is already betrothed to another man – the man he saved. Lucie and Darnay get married, and Carton is a rare but regular guest at their house, more a friend of Lucie’s than of her husband’s.

In France, after centuries of injustice and exploitation, matters come to a head and the Revolution breaks out. Darnay is summoned for help by an old family servant and feels obliged to go to Paris, testifying in court in order to help this servant. What he fails to realize, though, is the risk he is running by going back into his forefathers’ country, where violence has started to become endemic and where the wife of a wine merchant by the name of Defarge seems to have taken a special deadly dislike against any single scion of the house of Evremonde. Unluckily, Darnay’s noble but irresponsible decision to go to France without telling his wife before prompts her to follow her husband and to take her child with her. It is not long before Darnay finds himself imprisoned again and faced with the prospect of execution – and this is the moment, when Sydney Carton, once more, comes to the rescue.

As there are hardly any sub-plots and also comic relief is meted out most sparsely, this novel at first sight seems untypical of Dickens and rather “skinny” but if you look closer, you will see that appearances are deceiving. Dickens got his inspiration for this very melodramatic novel when he was performing as the protagonist in Wilkie Collins’s play The Frozen Deep, which has a similar love triangle at its centre: A spurned lover, instead of comforting himself with the idea of what the object of his affections will be like ten years later, swears that he will kill the man who has been preferred to him, and then he does what most men in his situation would do. He joins an arctic expedition. As Fate, or Writer’s Whim, will have it, he realizes that one of the members of the expedition is the very man he vowed to kill, but when the expedition goes haywire, he does all he can to save this man’s life, even at the cost of his own, since he knows that the woman he loves will never be happy without that man. This is basically the plot of A Tale of Two Cities, a story of noble self-sacrifice; only Dickens chooses a setting in which he exchanges the threat through the unfeeling elements for a threat posed by human passions unleashed. By doing this, Dickens gives more scope to the moral implications of his subject-matter in that he not only tells a story of human self-sacrifice but also of what blind hatred and desire for revenge, as in the case of Mme Defarge, can lead to. At the same time, though, Mme Defarge is not an out-and-out villain because her background story makes us able to understand her hatred, if not its excessiveness. One must say, though, that as a historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities ultimately comes up short since Dickens does not really care about analysing the intricate cause-and-effect-relationships and conflicts that would eventually lead to the events of 1789. Neither do we read about people such as Jacobins and Girondins, but for all we know after reading Dickens’s novel, it was the Defarges and their friends who started the Revolution. And it was apparently evil noblemen who ran over children and exercised the ius primae noctis who incurred the wrath of the masses until finally the camel’s back broke.

Probably this is the case because for Dickens political life was basically moral in nature, i.e. people were not so much called upon to change society as to change themselves, to show more consideration for each other in their everyday lives. In the light of all the various experience we had in the 20th century of ideologues who thought that they were able to create new societies, yea even a new kind of man, Dickens’s view may still seem naïve but at least it is simpatico.

Yet, for all its universally moral implications, A Tale of Two Cities may also be, along with David Copperfield, Dickens’s most personal novel, and so it is doubtless no coincidence that in both these tales one of the central characters bears Dickens’s initials. The Tale was written at a time when Dickens’s own private life saw far-reaching changes with his final separation from his wife Catherine and his romantic relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan. As some of his former friends criticised Dickens’s behaviour and as his domestic situation must also have put him at the risk of offending Victorian mores and estranging his reading public from him, he may well have had the feeling, rightly or not, that he, like Sydney Carton, was sacrificing himself for his true love.

We might not agree with Dickens’s perception of his own situation here – at least, I don’t – but we might still greatly enjoy A Tale of Two Cities as a novel. At least, I do.

n   “No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with a blameless though an unchanged mind when she was a wife and a mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him—an instinctive delicacy of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in such a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here. Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. "Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!"n

French Revolution must have been too big a thing for Dickens to miss given his protests against class discrimination and constant effort to be the voice of conscience for English rich. In fact, he actually managed to portray the Paris of time well enough, IMO, despite his caricature-like characters and the boring tone he often took.

And all that is good but the truth is three of four stars here belong to Sydney Carton. Charles is a boring Mr. Goody Two Shoes; Lucie and her father are no better – too perfect to be likable. And yet Dickens prefers to give them footage instead of one of the most memorable characters he would make. Sydney would be gone for several chapters. Often I was flipping through pages to see how long I have to continue reading before having him back.

The story is dull and too melodramatic – Charles managed to be accused of things he didn’t do three times (or was it four times?) and be saved each time – twice by Sydney. Also twice would he leave France under assumed identities. Sydney is in Paris to save Charles who had gone there to defend someone else.

Sydney is the only redeeming thing about the novel.

n  
n   “O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!”n

He actually said the best monologue that I ever have heard about love:

n  
n   “I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this homemade such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent forever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.” n  
n

And it is not only those big dialogues but the smallest of his acts that have nothing to do with his love. I loved everything Dickens had to say about him:

n  
n   “At one of the theatre doors, there was a little girl with a mother, looking for a way across the street through the mud. He carried the child over, and before the timid arm was loosed from his neck asked her for a kiss.” n

Florentino, Myshkin, Fredrick, Fredo and now Sydney – I kind of like these losers. I loved everything Dickens had to say about him even when I didn’t know the ending. He suffers from an inferiority complex probably due to the human tendency of measuring the worth of a life in terms of money. I don’t know why shouldn’t he try to move ahead in life, he is definitely street smart.

I didn't like the ending which was ruined by Sydney's foolishness. Here is what a more reasonable man would have done – he would have let Charles die; then leave Paris with Lucie. And when she is emotionally vulnerable and busy fainting over her husband’s death; he could have proposed her. But no, he was too short-sighted for all this. Some people just can’t get this right.

n  
n   Three Cigarettes and a Songn  
n
A tribute to Charles Dickens and Damien Rice

As usual, she had her beautiful smile on when she opened the door and she greeted him with her daily question, addressing him, as she always did, with his last name "How you are doing today, Carton?" He greeted her back - never ever answering the question, asked her after her husband, and went to meet her children. The children were waiting for him to arrive as he was their playmate and played the game with the same excitement as they did - only losing deliberately to his younger rivals. "You will never learn Carton" the young girl would say with a shake of the head and using his last name much like her mother. "You just wait and watch, I will surely beat you two tomorrow." He would say pretending to take the challenge.

Soon they all took their dinner and then it was time to put the children in their bed. As per ritual, he told them a bedtime story - a new one every day as their parents would watch and once the children were asleep, he would bow to the parents to take their leave. Today something of a smile in her eyes as he took their leave, brought the grief back in the form of that long familiar heaviness in his throat. He could barely suppress this sudden urge to weep only as long as he was in their sight - but as soon as Lucy closed the door behind him, he broke down, fell to his knees, and started crying. Lucy and her husband who happened to be standing by the window of their room watching him leave as they sometimes did, noticed him losing himself like that, and Lucy called for him to come back. He was shocked to hear her voice and realizing she had seen like that. Without turning back he replied that he was alright. But she pleaded in that soft voice of hers which make one submit all one's life to her wishes. And her husband had already run down and opened the door.

He knew what will happen next. His love for her was no secret in the family and even the kids knew it. And they all knew how he preferred nursing his grief in solitude and only came there when he could smile for them. Yet sometimes his heart would find its way to scream when he hadn't yet managed to get himself out of eyeshot and in such cases she won't let him leave until his usual... Not exactly cheerful, but nevertheless the smiling look that normally adorned his face. And through experiments, she had discovered the surest way to bring it back.

Though he was apologetic for being such a nuisance, he knew he had to go through the usual ceremony now that Lucy knew how she was feeling. Quite often in these times, he would wish to ask her about himself - who am I? Who am I to you? as if his whole existence was defined by the position she gave him in his world. But showing great self-control, he won't ask that question, in fact, often didn't say a lot in such times, knowing all he would have said in those times would be reproaches for a woman he should be and was ever so grateful to - for the dream.

Without being asked, he took the seat by the fireplace and took the usual three cigarettes (for some reason, they always had to be three) offered by the husband on Lucy's suggestion who herself went to the piano and started playing and singing the song. It was always the same song. And he would listen to it, watching the fire as it seemed to carry a secret communication with him and smoking his grief away to the charms of her beautiful voice. And it always worked, she offered very little as consolation that he must have instead of her - three cigarettes and a song, but it was enough, always enough. By the time he put off the last cigarette and took his leave assuring them he felt better now, his face was illuminated with that same old tired smile.

Ανεπανάληπτοι χαρακτήρες( εκτός απο την Λούσι που ήταν απλά όμορφη και αντε και κάπως αποφασιστική στην αρχή αλλα μετα χάνεται), υποδειγματική εξέλιξη της πλοκής και κλιμάκωσης της έντασης. Αποδεικνύεται περίτρανα γιατί ο Ντίκενς είναι απο τους δημοφιλέστερους συγγραφείς που πέρασαν ποτέ απο τον κόσμο τούτο. Γιατί ψυχαγωγεί και δημιουργεί προσοδοκίες πείθοντας σε να συνεχίσεις την ανάγνωση.

“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!

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“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.”

بهترین روزگار و بدترین ایام بود. دوران عقل و زمان جهل بود. روزگار اعتقاد و عصر بى‌باورى بود. موسم نور و ایام ظلمت بود. بهار امید بود و زمستان ناامیدى. همه‌چیز در پیش‌روى گسترده بود و چیزى در پیش روى نبود، همه به سوى بهشت مى‌شتافتیم و همه در جهت عکس ره مى‌سپردیم. الغرض، آن دوره چنان به عصر حاضر شبیه بود که بعضى مقامات جنجالى آن، اصرار داشتند در اینکه مردم باید این وضع را، خوب یا بد، در سلسله مراتب قیاسات، فقط با درجه عالى بپذیرند.

ماجرای کتاب داستان دو شهر در شهر های پاریس و لندن،قبل و بعد از انقلاب فرانسه اتفاق میفته
این رمان شرحِ حال چند کاراکترِ متفاوته که مهمترینِ اونها چارلز دارنی و سیدنی کارتن هستن..
چارلز دارنی که یه اشراف زاده هست در جریان انقلاب بزرگ فرانسه به علتِ یه جرمی که هیچوقت مرتکب نشده قربانی میشه و سیدنی کارتن هم یه انسان رنج کشیده هست که سعی میکنه تمام غم و درد خودش رو با عشق ورزیدن به همسر دارنی التیام بده...

اگر اثار دیکنز رو خونده باشید همیشه در داستان هاش به مسائل اجتماعی مثل فقر اختلاف طبقاتی و…. اشاره کرده
مثل داستان دو شهر که تفاوت بین اوضاع اجتماعی چارلز دارنیِ اشراف زاده و سیدنی کارتنِ رنجور و تهیدست به وضوح دیده میشه…این از ویژگی های قشنگ دیکنزه
توصیف ها و شخصیت پردازی ها قوی و خوب بود.
اوایل این کتاب منو جذب نکرد،اما کم کم تونست منو جذب کند و پایانش بیشتر ازهمه خیلی دوست داشتم.

Υπάρχουν οι συγγραφείς που γράφουν ευπώλητα βιβλία, υπάρχουν αυτοί που γράφουν ιστορικά μυθιστορήματα και άλλοι που γράφουν ιστορίες μυστηρίου. Βεβαίως, δεν μπορούμε να παραβλέψουμε τους δημιουργούς που εστιάζουν στις ιστορίες αγάπης ή δίνουν έμφαση στο δραματικό στοιχείο.
Υπάρχουν λοιπόν όλοι οι παραπάνω και υπήρχε και ο Ντίκενς. Ένας δημιουργός που είχε καταφέρει να συνδυάσει στα μεγάλα του μυθιστορήματα όλες τις παραπάνω "κατηγορίες" φτιάχνοντας διαχρονικά αριστουργήματα τα οποία εκτός από την αντοχή τους στο χρόνο τα χαρακτηρίζει και μια ανυπέρβλητη συγγραφική κομψότητα.
Στο συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο ο Ντίκενς μας μεταφέρει στην εποχή της Γαλλικής ��πανάστασης. Δύο πόλεις, δύο λαοί και πλήθος βασικών αλλά και δευτερευόντων χαρακτήρων βιώνουν με τον δικό τους τρόπο την επανάσταση που άλλαξε κατά πολύ την ιστορία της Γαλλίας και εν μέρει της Ευρώπης. Η ιστορία ξεκινάει με ένα τραγικό γεγονός. Την απελευθέρωση ενός γιατρού από τις φυλακές της Βαστίλης όπου κρατούνταν για περίπου 18 χρόνια. Ο γιατρός μεταφέρεται σε ένα ασφαλές μέρος αλλά η προσωπικότητα του έχει αλλοιωθεί από την πολυετή φυλάκιση αλλά και τις επιπτώσεις αυτής στην προσωπική του ζωή. Τα γεγονότα που ακολουθούν σχηματίζουν μια αλυσιδωτή αντίδραση μέχρι το εξαιρετικό φινάλε, που παρόλο που έχει μια δόση υπερβολής και ρέπει προς το χάπι εντ είναι εντέλει απόλυτα ταιριαστό με το ΄ντικενσιανό ύφος.
Ο λόγος του Ντίκενς είναι άλλοτε λυρικός άλλοτε περιγραφικός αλλά σε καμία περίπτωση το κείμενο δε βαραίνει δημιουργώντας προσκόμματα στον αναγνώστη. Το αντίθετο μάλιστα, οι παρομοιώσεις και οι περιγραφές του συγγραφέα μας βοηθούν να μεταφερθούμε στην καρδιά των γεγονότων και να κατανοήσουμε σε βάθος τα αισθήματα και τις αντιδράσεις των χαρακτήρων.
Κάπου εδώ αξίζει να αναφέρουμε και το σχόλιο του Ντίκενς σχετικά με τη Γαλλική επανάσταση, που μάλλον μπορούμε κάλλιστα να το γενικεύσουμε για κάθε είδους επανάσταση των λαϊκών στρωμάτων ανά τους αιώνες. Η καταπίεση και η εξουθένωση οδήγησε τον λαό της Γαλλίας στο να πάρει τα όπλα να ξεσηκωθεί, να δώσει τα πάντα για έναν αγώνα που είχε σαν βάσεις την Ισότητα, την Ελευθερία και την Αδελφότητα. Σταδιακά ο αγώνας αυτός έχασε σταδιακά τον αρχικό του χαρακτήρα και εξελίχθηκε σε ένα λουτρό αίματος με πρωταγωνίστρια την "Αγία Γκιλοτίνα". Λάθος άτομα, χωρίς κρίση χωρίς παιδεία πήραν αξιώματα και απέκτησαν εξουσία με αποτέλεσμα να εκτελούνται σωρηδόν αθώοι και ένοχοι μαζί. Στην τελική, δεν μπορεί ένας αγώνας που έχει ως σύνθημα την Ελευθερία να βάφεται από το αίμα αθώων και τα λαϊκά δικαστήρια να αποφασίζουν για τις τύχες πολιτών. Ας μην ξεχνάμε πως ένα πλήθος πωρωμένων επαναστατών χωρίς κρίση, έστειλε στην γκιλοτίνα ένα από τα πιο λαμπρά μυαλά που έχει αναδείξει η ανθρωπότητα, τον Αντουάν Λαβουαζιέ με τη δικαιολογία πως "η δημοκρατία δε χρειάζεται την επιστήμη"...
Εν κατακλείδι, το βιβλίο είναι ένα ταξίδι σε μια εποχή ταραγμένη και ανάμεσα σε δύο από τις πιο ιστορικές πόλεις της Ευρώπης που είμαι βέβαιος πως δε θα απογοητεύσει ακόμα και τους πιο απαιτητικούς αναγνώστες!

5/5