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.

"اگر صدایم برایتان آشنا می آید...اگر...اگر شبیه همان کسی است که شما می شناسید پس بیایید با یکدیگر گریه کنیم. اگر موهای من می تواند شما را به یاد او بیاندازد، بیایید باز در کنار هم گریه کنیم. اگر هنوز به یاد خانه ای هستید که زمانی در کنار یکدیگر بودید و حالا اسیر دیوان و ددان شده است پس بیایید در کنار هم گریه کنیم."

This novel has so many problems, yet somehow it still works?? Like, I am so confused about my enjoyment and engagement in this story? I really shouldn’t have liked this because its execution is a mess and towards the end there’s an ever-increasing number of coincidences (hello there, deus ex machina) … but I was still sobbing on the floor like the basic bitch that I am. I mean, I spoiled myself (unintentionally), so going into this book I knew exactly what was going to happen at the end … but that still didn’t keep me from spiralling into a crisis that I have still not overcome. Like, I am not over the ending; I probably never will be. Argh. So, yes, I had to give this a high rating (I always do when books elicit strong emotions from me), but don’t be surprised if I give you many, many reasons why this book sucks. Lmao.

n  “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—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”n

A Tale of Two Cities is an 1859 historical novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. It spans a time period of roughly 36 years, with the (chronologically) first events taking place in December 1757 and the last in either late 1793 or early 1794. I feel like this time span was one of the downfalls of the novel. By trying to write a historical novel, Dickens sacrificed his characters to the historical scope of the novel. A Tale of Two Cities lacks, to say it quite frankly, believable and round characters. It’s hard to engage with the catastrophes in the lives of our main characters because we barely know them.

At first, I wanted to root for Lucie and Charles’ blossoming love … until, all of a sudden, Dickens robbed me of that by hitting us with a time jump of five years, basically glossing over the time period in which Lucie and Darnay grow found of each other. All of a sudden, we have to accept that they are deeply in love and will be married soon. Like, what? And if that wasn’t enough we only get one mention of their honeymoon and then, boom, they have a daugher, and then, another boom, the daughter is already three years old. The reader has no chance to be let in on their romance because we are simply told that all of these things happen, we are shown none of it.

A Tale of Two Cities is structured around a central conflict between Charles Darnay’s desire to break free of his family legacy, and Madame Defarge’s desire to hold him accountable for the violent actions of his father and uncle.

This conflict embodies conflicting aspects of the French Revolution in general: on the one hand, the Revolution led to the deaths of many people who hadn’t done anything wrong, and were likely good people on a personal level. On the other hand, the Revolution was a response to generations of well-documented injustices. Like Darnay, many French aristocrats could be considered guilty by association, or as a result of profiting from systems of exploitation. The plot is set in motion years before the action of the novel begins, when the Evremondé brothers participate in a series of violent and cruel actions toward members of Madame Defarge’s family, and then unjustly imprison young Dr. Manette in order to conceal their crimes.

n  “Is it possible!” repeated Defarge, bitterly. “Yes. And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done—done, see you!—under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on.”n

The violence of the Revolution doesn’t just come out of nowhere: it breaks out because of the accumulation of decades of unjust treatment and abuses of power. Similarly, crimes committed generations earlier continue to haunt and threaten Darnay, Lucie, and Dr. Manette. Key events like Darnay building a career for himself in England, getting married, and starting his own family seem to be taking him closer to his desire of living a good and honest life without exploiting or hurting anyone. However, as Darnay eventually realizes, he hasn’t actually resolved the conflict because he has never taken responsibility for the suffering his family has caused: he has only run away from it.

Personally, I found Dickens’ reflections of aristocracy and French and English society fascinating, albeit he played it quite safe in his portrayal of revolutionaries as being fundamentally corrupt. Dickens believed that an era must be destroyed before a new one could thrive. Although he acknowledged the evils and oppressions that motivated the revolutionaries, he never idealised their caused. He has a clear stance against violence (in any shape or form). Of course, Dickens himself is writing from an immense place of privilege that goes unacknowledged in his observation of the higher classes.

Sometimes it felt like he was making it a little too easy for himself. He works a lot with doubles (light versus darkness … ya’ll know Dickens loves that shit) and, since he wanted to make the point that as fiercer and wilder a revolution may be, a social order is stronger and steadier (this can also be seen in the showdown between Mme Defarge and Miss Pross at the end), some of his characters are unbelievable and exaggerations; they are simply caricatures of the higher moral concept that they should present. Quite frankly, I hated that.

This may be an unpopular opinion but I found Lucie Manette to be an insufferable character. I cannot even with her. Lucie is loving and nurturing. Her love initiates her father’s spiritual transformation and renewal, proving the possibility of resurrection. She is the "golden thread” that ties all characters together. She’s a perfect wife and mother. There’s never tension between her and her husband. Her loyality (if you ask me, ABSURDITY) reaches such heights that when her husband rots in prison for over a year, she stands outside of the prison every day for a couple of hours (“IN THE SNOW AND FROST OF WINTER”) with the hope that her husband might catch a glimpse of her from prison cell?? Excuse me? I don’t believe it.

She’s boring and predictable, and I’ve honestly had it with Dickens and his need to portray certain women as angelic and pure and without flaws. Lucie is constantly belittled by the men around her, i.e. they don’t want to discuss “harsh” topics around her, for fear that she might not take it, and faint (which she actually does on multiple occasions in this novel) … and I just found it insufferable. Sorry, not sorry.

The two women who I absolutely adored in this tale – none of you will be surprised – are Mme Defarge and Miss Pross (whom I call Prossie because she’s just my bae). In the case of Prossie, my case is quickly made: she’s just a sass queen. She’s the funniest character in this whole entire novel and her dialogue was always golden.

n  “I began it, Miss Pross?”
“Didn’t you? Who brought her father to life?”
“Oh! If that was beginning it—“ said Mr. Lorry.
“It wasn’t ending it, I suppose?”n

I honestly shipped her with Mr. Lorry. Their banter was just that great. Her complete and total disgust of Paris and the French language had me rolling on the floor with laugher. Prossie was really out here bargaining with French merchants with hand signs, and she gave zero fucks. When she killed Mme Defarge at the end I wasn’t surprised at all. Prossie is a baddie. However, I don’t appreciate the notion that she had to go deaf at the end (by the gunshot with which she called Mme Defarge) to atone for her sins. Dickens, you are a coward. There was nothing sinful about her murder lmao.

It’s of course very on brand for me that my favorite female character is murdered by Prossie. Lmao. Mme Defarge was just as much of a badass as Prossie and I will defend her until the end of my days. First of all, Dickens did her dirrrttttyy by depicting her as this ruthless, relentless, soul-less bitch. Mme Defarge is depicted as hateful and bloodthirsty. Her vengefulness only propagates an infinite cycle of oppression, showing violence to be self-perpetuating. The vengeful Madame Defarge casts a shadow on Lucie and all of her hopes. Bla bla bla. Miss me with that bullshit. That’s just complete and utter bull.

n  “Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop,” returned Madame; “but don’t tell me.”n

I love Madame Defarge. She was fighting in the front row of the revolution, willing to die for a cause she believed in. She wielded a fucking axe. She’s basically one of the Three Fates (her knitting contains in its stitching an elaborate registry of those whom the revolutionaries intend to kill) … you cannot be more badass than her. She was strong and fearless and her determination is unmatched in this tale. Her sister was raped and mutilated and killed by fucking aristocrats (Darnay’s uncle and father) … if I were her, I would want revenge as well.

A Tale of Two Cities is written in a grandiose style. The omniscient narrator can see both into the past and the future, and uses this perspective to make sweeping pronouncements about human nature and what lies ahead. This style contributes to the effect of recounting history, because singular events are shown to cause major shifts in society. Another reviewer has put into perfect words what I felt during my reading of this novel: “I was in it for the words, not the tale.” I couldn’t agree more. Dickens is a master of his craft. There are so many quotable moments in A Tale of Two Cities, it made my literary heart sing. Dickens treats us to wonderful dialogue and atmospheric descriptions of time and place.

But even the beautiful writing couldn’t hide the fact that the tale at hand was actually quite messy. It took me such a long time to get situated in the story that even by the end of it, I still wasn’t quite sure of certain key events. Let’s be real, I still don’t know who killed Darnay’s uncle. I also don’t know who set his castle on fire. Lmao. And what’s up with all the grave digging? For the first time in a while I actually had to consult SparksNotes to understand what was going on in the chapters. Everything was so obscure and confusing, I honestly didn’t get it. Most of notes from the first 100 pages of this story are a variation of “what tf did just happen”, “I don’t recall any of this”, “I’m totally confused”, “apparently that happened”, “I don’t know what’s going on”. So for the first quarter of the book, I had no clue what was going on.

n  “Good could never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning.”n

But, by the end of the novel, I overcame all the apprehensions that I had with it … and I just cried and cried and cried. Mainly because Sydney Carton deserves better! SYDNEY FUCKING CARTON DESERVES SO MUCH BETTER! UGH! I’m not even mad that he didn’t end up with the woman that he loved (because Lucie is honestly not good enough for me, fight me on this), but the fact that he “had to” sacrifice himself, only because Charles fucking Darnay was a dumb fuck and went to Paris on his own … I can’t even.

n   “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

I honestly don’t understand the people who say that Carton had a great character development in this novel, like … my boy was great from the start? His profession of love to Lucie was so much more heartfelt that Charles’ talk with Doctor Manette (don’t get me started on that one)… he promised to lay down his life for her and her loved ones if need be … and ugh, then, at the end, when time came to prove that, he fulfilled his promise. I have still not recovered from the fact that upon his farewell to Lucie, he whispered into her ear: “A life you love.” I CANNOT. I CRY. I AM TEARS. I AM A RIVER OF TEARS. LEAVE ME ALONE.

n   “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.”n

I am not a hopeless romantic but somehow, Carton sacrificing his life for the woman he loved (and who doesn’t even deserve that sacrifice) has me dead. On a cheerier note, the fact that little Lucie prefers Carton over her own daddy is so relatable … like I honestly can’t blame her. The ending (like the beginning) is one of the most beautiful passages I have ever read: “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.”

It’s such a hauntingly beautiful notion that Carton will keep living through the people who love him and hold him in their memory, the people who are eternally indebted to him. Ugh, my baby boy.

This book is interesting for the wrong reasons. On the one hand there are elements that work very well and you feel confident in the author's skill but on the other hand the sequence of events that sucks one character after another back into France feels entirely unconvincing.

In Bleak House we see a bundle of characteristics taken to a negative extreme in the person of the French women Hortense. In A Tale of Two Cities this is extended here to the point that 'bad' and 'French' seem to be synonymous terms as do 'good' and 'English'. This culminates in the patriotic prize fight between the good English woman and the bad French woman.

Dickens wants to have his cake and eat it with his central plot conceit. He shows the reader that the Ancien regime was bad and evil, that the people who suffered under it were innocent victims, but equally that the people who overthrew the Ancien Regime and seek revenge are also evil while at the same time getting round the notion that all French people are evil by finding all three of the good ones and lining them up in this story. This isn't satisfying.

In the context of early Victorian Britain it paid not to look too radical and there was a ready market for anti-French & horrors of the French revolution stories. This anti-French sentiment is executed so crudely that while I'm convinced and moved by Dickens' social commentary in Hard Times, Bleak House or Great Expectations I'm entirely mistrustful of what I'm being told in A Tale of Two Cities.

Politically the timing of this novel is interesting. Dickens is writing eight years before the Second Reform Act, which extended the franchise in Britain, and he is looking back at the circumstances of the late eighteenth century. In terms of the cruelty and hardships of the best of times and the worse of times there are similarities between the two countries. Dickens is looking back over a subsequent period of slow and pragmatic reform in Britain and violent change in France. The reason he gives implicitly in his text for the different political outcomes is purely in the character of the two nations. The French are too passionate, while the phlegmatic English, and here remember Mr Rouncewell's 'Saxon' face in Bleak House contrasted with the aristocratic Dedlock, are constituently (politically and personally) capable of pragmatic change.

At once we see both political radicalism and a certain conservatism in Dickens' views. On the one hand the stress on the Saxon compared with the Frenchman takes us back to the Norman Yoke ideology, a mainstay of English political radicalism from the Levellers to the Chartists, yet the implications are conservative. Political life in Britain can change, pragmatically and effectively because of the nature of the English people. The lack of the traits that allow the English to be fundamentally democratic in the national character of the French however condemns them to being an example to avoid.

This is enormously reassuring to the comfortable classes subscribing to Dickens' periodicals. Even the still distant threat on the horizon of extending the franchise to decent working men can be weathered due to inherent English pragmatism  the product of our magnificent mucus no doubt as all affectionados of the four humours will agree. The Saxon national character will prevent the violence of a French Revolution from occurring in Britain.

At the same time Dickens' personal life was anything but phlegmatic and pragmatic. Perhaps something of the tension between the personal and the public gives the book the power it has. The fight isn't between the good Englishwoman and the bad Frenchwoman, it is Dickens at war with himself. Publicly pragmatism wins, personally, however, it is all about passion.

“He had never seen the instrument that was to terminate his life. How high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he would be stood, how he would be touched, whether the touching hands would be dyed red, which way his face would be turned, whether he would be the first, or might be the last: these and many similar questions, in no wise directed by his will, obtruded themselves over and over again, countless times…”
-tCharles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

The opening of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities is one of the most celebrated in the history of literature. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Dickens writes, beginning a lengthy, single-sentence paragraph that is marked by its rhythmic contradictions. “[I]t was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…” By the time you reach the end of this ambitious tease, you are compelled – at the least – to finish the page. In terms of grasping the reader’s attention, and convincing him or her to continue, Dickens succeeds marvelously.

Aside from hooking your attention with the skill that Quint uses to hook great white sharks, the first sentence of A Tale of Two Cities marvelously grasps the paradox of the French Revolution, which serves as the novel’s backdrop.

Begun in 1789 as a revolt against the poverty and hunger suffered by huge masses of the population, the French Revolutionaries sought the noble ideal of equality. In achieving this end, however, they unleashed a torrent of blood. They toppled a king, and then beheaded him. They killed thousands of people who resisted, many of those resisting in thoughts or words only. Finally, they started to kill each other, in a dispute over who was most pure. The result was a tumultuous decade in which lofty ends crashed against lethal means, leaving us with an event that is still hotly debated to this day.

***

For me, reading Dickens has been a lot like eating my vegetables. Both are good for you, but I have never been able to fully like either.

It has never been a question of talent. Dickens is an incredibly skilled writer with an unmatched eye for creating memorable characters. The problem I’ve had with many of the works I have read – or attempted to read – is that the whole is often less than the sum of their parts. That is, Dickens published many of his novels in serial form, and it often feels like he is actively inflating his word count in order to pad his (oft-troubled) bank account. The resulting digressions, plot contrivances, and weak endings tend to dampen the enjoyment I get from the worlds he creates.

The best Dickens is – in my humble estimation – A Christmas Carol. The novella is slim, symmetrical, and achieves the perfect balance between character and plot. Though it has been adapted so often that the whole thing feels like a cliché, there is a real genius to its structure and execution. There is not a single unnecessary moment, not a single misplaced beat. Compared to the shaggy meanderings of Great Expectations or Bleak House, A Christmas Carol is a breath of pine-scented winter air. Despite Dickens’s struggles to complete it, the finished novel knows exactly what it is trying to do, and exactly where it is going.

A Tale of Two Cities, one of two works of historical fiction Dickens published in his life, straddles the extremes. Certainly, it is not an endlessly growing story, such as the weighty, ever-expanding David Copperfield, but neither is it as sleek and efficient as Scrooge’s yuletide transformation. It is a bit of both, actually.

One is almost tempted to say it was the best of books, it was the worst…

But no, I would not give into that temptation.

***

The two cities referenced in the title – Paris and London – provide Dickens with his setting. We begin in the year 1775, with a messenger flagging down the mail-coach between London and Dover. The passenger who receives this message is a banker named Jarvis Lorry, who has just learned that Dr. Alexandre Manette, a French physician, has been released from the infamous Bastille prison in Paris, after serving an eighteen-year sentence. Dr. Manette, it turns out, has a daughter named Lucie, who has always believed her father to be dead.

While Lucie reunites with her father, we are introduced to the cruel Marquis St. Evrémonde, who gets our attention by running over a child in a carriage, and then yelling at the peasants for endangering his horses. The Marquis has a nephew, Charles Darnay, who narrowly escaped a conviction for treason against Great Britain.

Ultimately, Lucie and Charles fall in love, but Charles returns to France as the City of Lights is roiled by a storm of revolutionary violence. At the risk of spoiling anything, I will end my summary there. Suffice to say, the results are both entirely predictable and also entirely unpredictable. This is a function of Dickens’s propensity for over-plotting, as well as his habit of utilizing sheer melodrama to obscure the reality that his twists and turns aren’t all that clever. There are parts of A Tale of Two Cities that rely on reveals that would shame the writers of Scooby Doo.

Still, the storylines get so tangled and confused, it almost feels like a surprise when things happen. More importantly, Dickens seems to write with a clear idea of where he is going. In that sense, the plot is actually rather satisfying. It also helps that A Tale of Two Cities is less than four-hundred pages long. Thus, despite being serialized in weekly installments from April to November 1859, I didn’t feel like Dickens was trying to get paid by the word.

As I mentioned above, Dickens is famed for his fictional creations, whether that is flinty Ebenezer Scrooge, sycophantic Uriah Heep, or the sadistic Miss Havisham. Here, that list is added to greatly, especially Madame Defarge, a devoted Revolutionary who chillingly knits patterns that represent the names of people to be killed. At one point, her husband starts to worry about the excesses of the Revolution. Not Madame Defarge. She says to him: “Tell the wind and fire where to stop, but don’t tell me.” The supporting cast alone makes A Tale of Two Cities worth reading.

Not all the characters are winners, though. The blonde, saintly Lucie, for instance, described as “the golden thread” holding her family is together, is absolutely insufferable, to the extent I can only surmise she is the love child of Pip from Great Expectations and Esther from Bleak House. Every moment I spent with her, I darkly hoped that Madame Defarge was adding some stiches to her list.

***

Dickens’s novels shone a light on the lower classes. He had an obvious social conscious when it came to the poor and the downtrodden, a consciousness fervently expressed by the Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol. To that end, he clearly has sympathy for France’s peasantry, and the way their daily bread was subject to powers far outside their control. His outrage is nearly glowing when he describes the Marquis, who kills a child and pays the father off with a coin. It is just as clear, however, that the violence attending the French Revolution disturbed him. The most affecting part of this novel – or perhaps any of his novels – is the tumbril ride one of his characters takes to the guillotine. Meanwhile, the zealous Revolutionary Madame Defarge is portrayed as a villain.

In that way, A Tale of Two Cities really captures the tension of the French Revolution, where bad acts gave way to good intentions, which gave way to bad acts in the name of good intentions.

This is Tessa's favorite. The book that Will grew to love. It must have something special.

Alright, I've mentioned before that I majored in English in college. If you've been following my reviews you'll notice that I've been knocking off a lot of classics that I missed out on in that time. Now here it is, my big dark secret… I've never read a proper Dickens novel. Prior to this I've only read some of his short stories and A Christmas Carol.

Well, it's been corrected! I've finally read a Dickens novel! Huzzah! Hooray! I went with the one it seems like… well, everyone has read.

Okay, so yes, I went with his most commonly read book, and yes I chose it entirely because it was his most commonly read book. I confess though, other than that it took place during the French revolution and those most famous and often quoted opening and closing lines, I knew very little about the book. Seems like the perfect introduction to Dickens proper, right?

Well, yes and no. Let me start by saying that yes, I did greatly enjoy this book. I liked it very much and was impressed at how intricately plotted it was. Scenes that I genuinely thought might have been comedic padding actually turned out important. Little details mentioned early on are used in interesting ways throughout. There are some genuinely beautiful, almost reflecting passages of the book where a scene early on is somewhat repeated with characters changed. There is a lot I loved about this book and I think my rating reflects that.

Here's the thing… my two favorite aspects of the book? The moments of humor and the interesting side characters. I'll be honest here, I didn't really care much about Charles Darnay or Lucie. They were frankly bland and uninteresting. Charles had the charisma of a board of wood and Lucie is so overly sweet that I feared diabetic issues if there were many chapters from her point of view. Dr. Manette was an interesting character because Dickens gave him more of a psychological depth to him… but really, the characters I liked reading about? The humorous messenger, grave robber and occasional bodyguard Jerry Crutcher, the man of business Jarvis Lorry, the clever and snide Sydney Carton and the sinister Madame Defarge. The side characters were all interesting, I loved seeing these quirky and interesting people come and go.

In other words, from what I gather, the thing I liked about this book the most (humor and the interesting side characters) are the aspects that show up more prominently in Dickens's other works.

So, apparently I picked wrong.

That said, this was a lovely and wonderful read. The writing was beautiful, I enjoyed my entire time with it and it will almost certainly not be my last Dickens novel… though it is a relief to finally cross him off my list of authors I'm embarrassed to say I had not read. 4/5 stars.

The first Dickens book I've read in a long time, aside from my in-depth, tear-apart-and-lose-all-enjoyment-therefore-culminating-in-another-go-in-many-years read of Hard Times for University, and I was excited to read it, purely because, having seen the ITV adaptation on telly a while ago, I could re-enact the Sydney Carton senarios using the face of the delectable Dirk Bogarde. (FYI Dirk Bogarde versus Richard Attenborough in a black-and-white bout of fisticuffs would only cause me to faint like a Eighteenth Century dandy witnessing the revealing of a piano's ankles.)

Though set in the late-Eighteenth Century surrounding the Reign of Terror that was the French Revolution, Dickens has still encapsulated everything that matters to those less fortunate than others (in this scenario it's French peasants). There is an interesting love triangle, though not at the forefront of the plot to begin with, makes it mark toward the end, with a scoop of suitors to boot, along with a collective of amusing old men and fiesty women. Very Dickens.