Where I Expected to Like It, But Liked It Better Than That

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is now my favorite Dickens novel. Strange to think--there was a time I actively disliked Dickens and resented spending any time working through one of his novels. I guess Bleak House changed that for me. Now, I generally like reading Dickens at any time, and thoroughly enjoyed this novel beginning to end.

Not sure how I got here, but I'm glad.

I have seen the most recent movie version of this story, and that probably helped me get into it as I could visualize the characters more completely than usual, but I'm sure I would have enjoyed it without the movie anyway. The whole story--book and movie--has a certain wholesome feel to it, a kind of cheerful inevitability, a hopefulness, a sure sense that good people are going to work together to stomp out and destroy the plots of the bad people. There's some of that in many of his novels, but it's much stronger here, more directly promoted by the author, and I'm surprised at how explicit it is and how well it worked.

I mean, come on--the exceedingly kind and philanthropic twins, the Mr. Cheerybles? I love them, they're awesome, and they're clearly Cheery. They have a positive outlook on life and want to help good people. Everyone who works with them has the same cheery, helpful attitude. By the time one reads to the middle section where we encounter them, it is impossible not to feel that such angelic men are going to put things to rights.

Nicholas, IMO, is a great MC. He is very serious and committed to duty and honor, but he's also a bit of a hothead, lashing out when righteously indignant, and that combination is a winner. There is little as satisfying in literature as the scene when he beats Mr. Squeers. (Oh, sorry--spoiler! But the book has been out for a few years, so...) We see, first of all, the virtue in him. The way Nicholas insists on putting Smike's needs ahead of his own... and protects his sister and Madeline Bray... and remembers all the friends who helped him along the way... these together persuade the reader to see in him a hero who deserves good fortune if it comes his way. And the way he bullies and threatens the criminals who deserve no better treatment shows you that there's fire in his belly and steel in his spine, very desirable qualities in a hero.

In general, the criminals are all irredeemable and the good guys are entirely admirable, and though that might sound cloying Dickens pulls it off. It's charming and entertaining, and when we reach the end and all is resolved it feels satisfying and complete. But because a happy ending is even more poignant when paired with loss, we are left with this paragraph and this image as the conclusion to the novel, when in later years Nicholas and his sister have children visiting the spot where Smike was buried:

The grass was green above the dead boy’s grave, and trodden by feet so small and light, that not a daisy drooped its head beneath their pressure. Through all the spring and summertime, garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands, rested on the stone; and, when the children came to change them lest they should wither and be pleasant to him no longer, their eyes filled with tears, and they spoke low and softly of their poor dead cousin.

Beautifully done. Highly recommended.

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