The Other One Where Bad Things Happen to Good People

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First twist--I liked the book. (I had intended never to read Oliver Twist, going back to college. I was pretty firm on this. Obviously, I relaxed this ban.)

Second twist--Oliver isn't really the main character, is he? I mean, other than being adorable and hard done by, he doesn't do much. (TVTropes.com lists Oliver as a pinball protagonist, a character who "provides no plot impetus in and of himself, and essentially [spends] the entire story... in a reactive state." They also insist that tropes are not inherently bad, and I agree. It's just an interesting observation about the main character.)

From a mystery point of view, Oliver is the right character to focus on. He has no idea where he come from or who his relatives might be, and it is revealed over the course of a few years. He doesn't do anything himself to solve the mystery, but he is at least at the heart of it.

Monks is more central to the story, in many ways, but it would be hard to focus more on him without giving away the mystery from the start. Besides, he's horrible. Fagin is next in line among the villains, and he features in many more pages of the novel, but he could only ever be an anti-hero as awful as Monks.

The two kind families who care for Oliver at various times make for better protagonists of the story, as they are present for more of the events (both in the pages of the novel and in the broader story that preceded it), and they are more active, doing more to move the plot than anyone else. Perhaps Mr. Brownlow is the most central of these characters, though I'll admit it would be hard to think of this book as The Adventures of Mr. Brownlow......

In other ways, the hero is Nancy, the fallen, messed-up young woman. She's the one I'd most like to meet, and she's the one that sneaks into the reader's heart. (Apparently.) It's not her story, but she steals it.

I had always thought that the story would be about Oliver becoming a pickpocket and living a horrible life. The second part is pretty true, but I'm glad that we're saved from watching him steal handkerchiefs like Moll Flanders or something. The actual plot is more interesting than that, thankfully.

There are a few scenes where characters must tell a whole bunch of backstory, and that's pretty tedious and nearly impenetrable. I considered drawing family trees and their various connections to track every marriage and sibling and the like that happened offstage in previous years, but with a little care I kept it all straight. A week from now, though, I will have forgotten who exactly is related to whom. It was rather clunky, I think, though it didn't harm the novel too much.

Anyway, it was better than I expected, pretty fun after all, if one has the time to attack it. I liked it about as well as The Old Curiosity Shop, and more than Martin Chuzzlewit, but less than A Tale of Two Cities or Bleak House or David Copperfield.

Recommended.

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