Where Lizzie, Bella, and Jenny Shine

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can see why this is many readers' favorite Dickens novel, or one of their favorites. I think I'd place it about 3rd (behind A Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House, if anyone wants to know), though I have a couple books yet unread. Overall, I liked it, though it went on a bit. It's one of his very long books at ~325,000 words, and though that's a bunch, it doesn't read as ponderously as a couple others. So--somewhere between "Great story!" and "quite a bit too long" is 4 stars.

Much of the story is a real pleasure, and most of that (for me) has to do with cheering on certain characters. The scenes with the protagonist ladies--Lizzie Hexam and Bella Wilfer--are my favorite, because it's easy to root for them while watching them make their way through the traps laid out to destroy them. Both of them are highly moral young women--at least they both are by the end--and they're very sweet. The Boffins, who take Bella in for most of the book, are a mixed bag, though there's a bit of a trick there (not to be too spoilery on this 150-year-old book) and they turn out to be kinda cool. One of the best characters is the disabled Jenny Wren, who is very young with an old drunk father who she treats like her own child. She tends to see through people better than others and seems to be the most centered character in the story. (Her HEA is hinted at more than spelled out, but I think we're meant to rely on it.) Oh, and the main male character, the "mutual friend" of the title, is ultimately interesting and very sympathetic, with a cool arc that is rewarding for the reader.

The villains, however, are numerous and tiresome. Bradley Headstone, a teacher friend of Lizzie's brother, falls in love with Lizzie and harasses her to the point of stalking her. Then he stalks another man who is also stalking Lizzie, a useless gentleman named Eugene Wrayburn. Headstone tries to kill Eugene and frame another ne'er-do-well, but that doesn't turn out great. What bugs me is that Lizzie in fact falls in love with Wrayburn, her richer stalker, for reasons I can't fathom. (It struck me about the same as if Elizabeth Bennet were to marry Mr. Wickham at the end. Noooo!) Anyway (spoiler), he becomes a better person because of her, so I guess we'll allow it...

Headstone--the poorer stalker--is blackmailed by the guy he tried to frame for an attempted murderer, and their mutual ending was appropriately final. I approved of that. And Silas Wegg (more spoilers--sorry) fails in his effort to blackmail the Boffins. The Lammles con each other and then fail in their next two cons before disappearing from the story. Mr. Fledgeby abuses his Jewish front-of-office guy while forcing him to abuse the unfortunates whose debt he holds, though Fledgeby at least gets a good beating from the con artists before they bail. And the wealthy Veneerings spend every scene they're in looking down on everyone else.

And all this is nice, but it really was long, filled with extravagant birdwalks. There are so many scenes with so many other characters that don't amount to much, and those scenes are filled with pointless dialogue about random things that I think are meant to be comic in effect but read now like padding and irrelevant detours. TBH, it seemed that most of their stories were here to try the reader's patience. Dickens does like to have his characters sit around and talk shit until you don't know or care what they're even on about anymore, as it has nothing to do with the plot or the main characters.

But here's why it still kinda works: he would fill 50 pages with tedious nothings and then have a hot 20 or 30 pages of story again where you're learning things about the characters that matter and wanting to learn more, and maybe seeing them triumph over one of the villains, and it's fun again. Fair enough. Well played. But I still could do without the long tedious part, personally.

Anyway, the good parts are good, so... recommended, overall.

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