A Tale of Two Cities holds the dubious honor of being the first book I ever picked up and failed to finish. The very first.

From there, it's all gone downhill. Just look at my reviews where I casually admit to throwing away classics unread. A Light in August, Lolita, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, etc, etc...

If you enjoy the little things, like being sane and not hating life, then I recommend you never pick this 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.”

It rarely happens that a quote from a book haunts me but this one, well, this one does. I finished “A Tale of Two Cities” about two weeks ago, yet I’m still not over the ending. But how could I? After all, this is one of those rare books that keep you thinking even after you finished the last page and already closed the cover of the book.

The most intriguing thing about this all is the following though: I had a really, really tough time getting into “A Tale of Two Cities” when I first started to read it. XD The sentences were too long and complicated and Dickens writing style is lengthy and so full of superfluous words that every editor, no matter the century she/he lives in, would have had a field day crossing them out. *lol*

”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!”

So what happened? I can’t explain it, but I think Dickens’s magic happened. At least that’s the only thing I can come up with while I’m trying to explain my sudden love for this book. I mean we have a little bit of comedy in here when three different suitors attempt to ask for Lucy Manettes hand, yet at the same time Doctor Manette’s mental condition is making the situation as serious as it could possibly be.

”What can I do for my friend? No man ever can have been more desirious in his heart to serve a friend, than I am to serve mine, if I knew how.”

Every character in here is either an angel (Miss Manette) or a precious snowflake (Mr. Lorry & Charles Darnay) or it’s bloodthirsty and evil. (Madame Defarge & The Marquis) There is no grey area, well not unless you count Sydney Carton who is by far the most intriguing character in the entire book! I loved him! <3 Yes, he might have been a drunkard (and I’m pretty sure he suffered from depression) but of all the characters that made an appearance in “A Tale of Two Cities” he’s certainly the most honourable and pure soul!

”It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse.”

And this, Ladies and Gentleman, is the true tragedy of this book! That Sydney thinks he’s worth nothing even though he DESERVES THE FREAKING WORLD!!!! Excuse my screaming but ADKFASKDFKASDFKSDFKASD! I get all emotional just thinking about this lovable man! He is worthy, he is wantable, to hell with it, I’m actually going to compare him to my precious boy Adam Parrish now! *LOL* Both of them deserve so much and they are always trying to fit in, to make their life better, yet there’s always something that holds them back. That makes their lives difficult.

”You are a good man and a true friend,” said Carton, in an altered voice. “Forgive me if I notice that you are affected. I could not see my father weep, and sit by, careless. And I could not respect your sorrow more, if you were my father. You are free from that misfortune, however.”

No one notices the struggle he’s going through and a lot of people judge him for his actions. Not outright into his face but behind his back. Truth be told, I think Miss Manette might have been the only person who ever got a decent glimpse at his true character and nature. And this only because he let her see it! Because he loved her and because he wanted her to know that there was a part of him, the part that loved her, that actually was worthy of her love as well. T_T

”I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding.”

But we’re in the time of the guillotine, the time of change, of liberté, égalité et fraternité! And forgiveness and compassion, let alone justice aren’t truly on the agenda. People like the Marquis had no mercy with their subjects and their former servants pay them back in kind. Unfortunately this also means that innocent people, regardless of their actions and their lack of involvement are sentenced to death as well. Casualties in a war that gained momentum way too fast.

And so it happens that the storyline swells to a crescendo that ends in a climax I didn’t expect!

Boy, did that ending throw me! O_o
It was a beautiful ending, tragic, but beautiful, hopeful and sad. And it taught me that Dickens was indeed a great writer. ;-)

”Are you dying for him?” she whispered.
“And his wife and child. Hush! Yes.”
“O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?”
“Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.”

I cried an ocean reading this scene!!! Sydney Carton deserved so much better than that!!! What a noble and gentle and compassionate soul!! What a brave man that gives comfort while he’s going to his death as well!!! I can’t even!!! T_T I just can’t… *cries and ocean again*

Conclusion:

I really loved this book! Dickens might write long sentences, he might take his time until everything gets into motion but damn, he certainly knows how to deliver a punch line! If you like classics and don’t mind books with a lengthy build-up you definitely should go for this! It was so worth it! XD

”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.”

___________________


3 Things:

1.) I’m finally doing this and I got myself some backup! XD
This book always kind of intimidated me but I think with the help of this awesome boy I’ll eventually manage to read it!

Thank you so much for doing this buddy read with me! =))

2.) Yesh!!! I can’t wait to know what Will and Tessa meant when they compared themselves to characters from “A Tale of Two Cities”!!! I’m sure my reread of “Clockwork Angel” later on this year will make so much more sense after reading this. *lol*

3.) It’s Charles Dickens, n  ANDn it’s about time I finally read one of his books!!!

I first read this in high school as a substitute for "Oliver Twist" which was not in my high school library catalog. Come to think of it now, I have never read that book. Weird... If ever I get a chance to meet "high-school-me", I bet she will be over the moon and back to know that the world is her library! Any book, on demand! I guess it would distract her enough not to realize she has no social life. Anyway...

"A Tale of Two Cities" is, once again, one of those books I have read when I was too young to understand. I still struggle reading this book, but this time around, it generated more empathy from me. Charles Dickens wrote this novel long after the French revolution but it was still timely. Centuries later, in the here and now, it's major themes still hold true. Any generation, in my opinion, could start their story with, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...."

Dickens explores human emotions and reactions that aren’t specific to any one historical event. Human suffering isn’t simply an 18th-century French problem. The novel, with all of the poverty and injustice it displays, is an exploration of conditions that will persist just as long as violence and inequity continue to flourish.

Although this book is a major social critique, it’s also an exploration of the limits of human justice. What is justice really? When does justice start becoming injustice? It provokes big questions and they’re still pretty relevant today. Can you imagine a country in which innocent people are persecuted for their political view? The closer I look, the more the false imprisonment of Dr. Manette or Charles Darnay becomes something that we deal with in the real world, as well as the fictional one.

"A Tale of Two Cities" is also a meditation on some of the most pressing existential questions that trouble humankind. Do we really know anything at all about the people around us, even the people we love? Can a single life make a difference in a world filled with hatred, rage, and violence? Times of strife make these questions all the more pressing to answer, but, as Dickens reminds us, that doesn’t mean that the answers are easy to find.

This was difficult to read but it still managed to captivate me and forgo doing the dishes. I'm quite happy to give this book another chance. Books that disappointed me before might change my mind at some point in my life. As always, I don't confuse my own lack of sympathy with the assumption that, if I don't get it, the book is necessarily flawed. I think that's why classics endure.

Excuse me while I'm CRYING over this MASTERPIECE.

[I know I promised a review, but the truth is, I am at loss for words. Who am I to talk about Dickens? Who am I to talk about a gut-wrenching, brilliant story that brings out the magnitude of human nature? A Tale of Two Cities haunts me. Follows me everywhere. And I have to thank Will Herondale and Tessa Gray for cultivating the need to read it.]

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.

My review from December 2013 says;

I have just finished A Tale of Two Cities and I am in awe of the story and the man that wrote it. 
This is doubly true today having finished my first re read after 6 years have passed.

This time I could see all the brilliant foreshadowing in every chapter.
I knew where we were going this time and as well as the gripping story, which is horrifying and descriptive of terrors you'd not want in your worst nightmares but were based on factual events such as, The storming of the Bastille, The people accused by other citizans like Madame Defarge based on just observations and very little evidence.

The knitting women were real.
Before the tricoteuse became rejected thugs, they were respected sisters of the resistance
The women were known to hang around the guillotine, waiting for the heads to roll. They got to know the executioners, there were so many death sentences. Between the slices, they knitted. It was automatic — something to keep their hands busy.
More information in this link. https://www.geriwalton.com/tricoteuse...

Quotes;
For my money this is the best opener of any book ever..
“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.” 

Bookended with the best closing lines ever..
“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.” 

What a fantastic experience reading this again for the second time. I know that down the road a few more years hence I will read it again and once more be in awe of the story and the man who wrote it.

5***

Hundreds, thousands of stories long to have a quotable verse, just one.

Tale of Two Cities, Dickens masterpiece as far as I'm concerned, is bookended by two of the most recognizable quotes in all of English language.

This is also the darkest story I have read of his, and no doubt, it's about the bloody French Revolution and Dickens spares none of his acerbic wit to demonize what was rightly demonic. Yet, to his credit and genius, neither does he sugar coat the great social injustices that led irresolutely to the collapse of the aristocratic French class.

Lacking his usual humor, again understandable, this nonetheless again displays his mastery of characterization. No character is as complete and now archetypal as Madame Defarge. I thought that Bill Sykes was his greatest villain, but Citizeness Defarge was simply a portrait of evil.

So many stories hope for a memorable scene and this has many, highly influential since, I thought of several works that had borrowed heavily from TOTC themes (especially Doctor Zhivago, many allusions to TOTC, and that also made me wonder was TOTC the first dystopian novel?) The scene between Madame Defarge and Ms Pross was stunning, and made me think of the riveting scene between Porfiry and Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.

Brilliant.

Charles Dickens is a demanding writer. The narratives of Great Expectations and Oliver Twist are relaxed and simple when compared to this. Reading Dickens requires concentration, and a will to carry on when sometimes the writing gives you a headache.

This is a historical novel. Dickens tells the story of the storming of the Bastille, some fifty years after it happened. Unlike most of his work, all traces of humour are removed. There are no caricatures and quirkiness within his writing. This is all very serious material, which, of course, it needs to be. But, for me, this is what Dickens does best. His ability to juxtapose themes of human suffering, poverty and deprivation with ideas of the grotesque, ridiculous and, at times, the plain mad, are where his real master strokes of penmanship come through.

That’s what I like the most about Dickens, so I knew my enjoyment of this very serious novel would be hindered immediately. What we do have though is a strong revenge plot running through the book, and the revolt which occurred two thirds of the way in. And, like the name of the book suggests, this is a tale about two cities: London and Paris. Dickens loved to criticise society, and all its stupid aristocratic nuances. Here he takes great pains to show that London is no symbol of societal perfection. The aftermath of the French revolution placed the British on a pedestal, at least, to their own minds. They could not believe that their own current systems of ruling could cause such a travesty within their own capital. Dickens shows that the men in power were just as corrupt and corruptible wherever they sit, revolution can happen again.

“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. 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.”



The streets of Paris are seen before and after the bloodshed, and all the strands of seemingly unrelated plots are artfully (perhaps slightly forcefully?) woven together. Dickens brings the lives of a huge cast of characters, spanning over two cities, and two nations, all of which have a varied station in life and political beliefs, into one final conclusion. And it’s a strong conclusion, though heavily reliant of coincident. This is nothing unusual for fiction of the Victorian era, though it did feel very much like a construct. The modernists would address such issues in the next century, mainly to criticise them heavily due to their incapability at capturing the essence of life within fiction. Perhaps they have a point here?

So this is a very strong story, one that is highly perceptive and intuitive at times. As a reader, I need a certain degree of entertainment when reading. I find that the wonderfully comic elements that are in some of Dickens’ other books help to break up the more intense moments of the plot. Even Jane Austen would interpose her narrative with moments of scathing sarcasm and wit. For me, this is far from the finest work of Dickens despite the fact that it seems to be his most popular.

Wiele osób powie, że ta książka jest nudna, bo mało się dzieje, a niektóre wątki są rozwleczone.
Zgadzam się poniekąd z tą wypowiedzią, ale po historii mającej ponad 100 lat, nie spodziewałam się tak współczesnego przekazu.
Zakończenie pozostawiło mnie z otwartą buzią i łzami w oczach.

The year is 1775, and Dr. Manette, imprisoned unjustly 18 years ago, has been released from the Bastille prison in Paris. His daughter, Lucie, who had thought he was dead, and Jarvis Lorry, an agent for Tellson's Bank, which has offices in London and Paris, bring him to England.
Skip ahead five years to 1780. Frenchman Charles Darnay is on trial for treason, accused of passing English secrets to the French and Americans during the American Revolution. He is acquitted when eyewitnesses prove unreliable partly because of Darnay's resemblance to barrister Sydney Carton.
In the years leading to the fall of the Bastille in 1789, Darnay, Carton, and Stryver all fell in love with Lucie Manette. Carton, an irresponsible and unambitious character who drinks too much, tells Lucie that she has inspired him to think about how his life could have been better and that he would make any sacrifice for her. However, Stryver, Carton's barrister friend, is persuaded by Mr. Lorry, now a close friend to the Manettes, against asking for Lucie's hand. Nevertheless, Lucie marries Darnay, and they have a daughter.
Meanwhile, in France, Darnay's uncle, the Marquis St. Evremonde, is murdered in his bed for crimes committed against the people. Charles has told Dr. Manette of his relationship with the French aristocracy but no one else.
By 1792, the revolution had escalated in France. No one knows why Mr. Lorry receives a letter at Tellson's Bank addressed to the Marquis St. Evremonde. Darnay sees the letter and tells Lorry that he understands the Marquis and will deliver it. The letter is from a friend, Gabelle, who was wrongfully imprisoned in Paris and asked the Marquis (Darnay) for help. Knowing that the trip will be dangerous, Charles feels compelled to go and help his friend. He leaves for France without telling anyone the real reason.
The mob recognized Darnay (St Evremonde) and was imprisoned in Paris on the road to Paris. Mr. Lorry, who is in Paris on business, is joined by Dr. Manette, Lucie, Miss Pross, and later, Sydney Carton.
Dr. Manette influences the citizens due to his imprisonment in the Bastille and can have Darnay released, but he is retaken the next day on a charge by the Defarges and sentenced to death within 24 hours.
Sydney Carton influences one of the jailers and can enter the cell, drug Darnay, exchange clothes, and have the jailer remove Darnay, leaving Carton to die in his stead.
On the guillotine, Carton peacefully declares, "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."

For an avid Francophile, I notoriously don't like books set in France. I've read this twice before, once in high school where I gave it five stars, and once sometime after, where I gave it one. I feel middling about it this time around.

Charles is fine. Sydney is sad, and I'm into that. I find myself bored by Lucie, and wonder how on earth Will and Tessa would name their child after her. However, on making it to that series, I don't like that Lucie either, so I suppose it's fine. Five stars for Dr. Manette.

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.