Where Louisa Resists Being Crushed Under the System

Hard Times by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this more than any Dickens novel I have read. I'm not sure I'd go to the difficulty of arguing that this is his best novel, whatever that means, but I can say it's the one that I had the best time reading.

[Bleak House, maybe, could be his "best" book--IMO, I mean, not in some universal way--and A Tale of Two Cities, despite its overexposure making some dismiss it, should be in the same conversation. But neither was as fun to read, even though they had their charms.]

What's the difference? I think it's largely scale. Most of his books are [searching for a kind word...] freaking bloated and in dire need of editing. I get it. That was the norm, the expectation, and he's just giving everyone what they want. In 2025, many fantasy readers ask for the same thing--a Big Fat Fantasy of a thousand or 1500 pages, filled with "world-building," lots and lots of characters, as many POV characters as you can manage, with tons of subplots. Some of those are, to me, grossly padded and dull, but to readers who just want to be in it, to get lost, the length is the key. I feel like that's what a lot of Dickens readers want, too--enough pages to get lost in, to have room to be in the middle of it for a good long time, even if that means lots of secondary characters making lots of long, pointless speeches. (I'm looking at you, Pickwick Papers. And you, Martin Chuzzlewit. And The Old Curiosity Shop. Even you, David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby.) And to be fair, there's a lot to enjoy in any case in those very long books. I enjoyed parts of every one of those, and overall found them worth reading. Some people (forgive my incredulousness) actually find the ridiculous speeches of ridiculous characters funny. They find blowhards holding forth, page after page on dry-as-dust topics, amusing in their intentional excess. Bless them for that ability. I don't have it, and it made it hard to finish some of those books.

But this novel doesn't make that demand on the reader. We have one main story in one main setting, and the subplots branching from it are connected and integral and interesting. Nearly every chapter advances the plot, giving us meaningful action and emotional, engaging connections between characters that kept me reading more than his other books.

The plot itself is more direct than is usually the case, with a shape and an arc that are clear enough that we don't wonder where we're going. Louisa and her brother are raised in a no-nonsense home, taught to suppress genuine emotion, to make their wishes and dreams subordinate to practical concerns, especially money. Louisa is taught to be compliant and is married off to a rich old banker and industrialist and her brother goes to work for the man, which means they should be perfectly content. Of course, they aren't. Humans aren't made for such cold rationalization.

The dirty, smoky, impoverished industrial city of Coketown is the perfect emblem of this--the wish for beauty and health and color and happiness is subordinated to the need to earn a living and make money. The city is the system, and we find that it crushes lives, exploits workers, subverts justice, and harms even those sitting at the top of the it. Innocents are slandered. Workers who want to do more for their families, who want to organize to balance the power of the wealthy owners, are treated like criminals. Louisa's father, as an educator, wanted to raise up his children and his students to fit in that system, but it's doomed. He learns this himself, to his credit, and tries to make amends, which he does, to a degree.

(As an old teacher, it's hard not to recognize the parallels to modern education. I hope I did a lot better job making education itself more pleasant, but there are elements of the system--think high-stakes testing and similar state-mandated drudgery and pollution--that were unavoidable. Required. Where teachers are unable to modify or ameliorate the system, they try to prepare students for it. "Yes, this is stupid, but let's make it hurt you as little as possible." As misguided as her father was, that in effect was what he was trying to do--he was making square pegs fit industry's round holes, with all the violence and good intentions that suggests.)

Despite the literal gloom here, it's not a sad novel, really. In parts, yes. But there is hope, and growth, and some good people have good things happen. You have to feel sympathy for the poverty and smoke and horrible work, and I do, but there's a feeling that better things are coming, or are at least possible, and Sissy's children (mentioned on the last page) are a sign of that. And it's told in a way that I found more than usually entertaining, making me push farther each time I picked it up than I usually do, interested in what was going to happen next, wanting to find out what happened to the characters. You know--fun.

It was good. I liked it. 5 stars.

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Where It Wore Me Out

The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought it was some heavy going, tbh.

I've come around some on Dickens; things I once found dry as dirt can now seem charming and goofy and moderately humorous. And most of his novels have characters I can care about and hope to see have a happy ending. You root for David Copperfield or Pip or Oliver Twist, and some of his books can evoke strong feelings. I even shed a tear or two reading A Tale of Two Cities.

But this book tried my patience. It is about nothing. It's more about nothing than any book I've ever read. Some guys hang out. They go to some places. They meet some people and get invited to their place. They drink--all the time they drink--and eat some stuff.

Somebody says I have a story, and we hear the story, even if it has nothing to do with anything else in the book. (A couple of the stories were significantly more entertaining than the main plot. The ghost story set in warehouse of old carriages was actually pretty cool.)

So what's the plot? What do they want to do? What is anybody's intention? Goal? Purpose? Is there a plot in the normal sense? (My opinion is no, unless you're willing to stretch the definition of plot a long way.)

Dickens always includes a lot of nonsense, partly for the sake of satire and partly (I suspect) to pad his word count. He likes to belabor meaningless incidents and transcribe every word in every pointless conversation. It's in all his books. He really liked having minor characters talking about random stuff, especially if they have impenetrable accents. I think it's meant to be funny, and I expect there are people who actually find it funny, but I never ever ever ever do. I try to work though it patiently to get to the parts that matter in my estimation, but that pointless nonsense is the heart of this novel. If you took out the eating and drinking and irrelevant conversations, the book would be about 50 pages.

I liked his servant, who was smarter than everybody else and did some good stuff while nobody was looking. He was more often entertaining, and his contribution let me give this a barely-passing 3 in good conscience. And I liked the happy endings, though I could not tell any of the minor characters apart enough to care who was Wardle or Winkle or Tubman or Snodgrass. It didn't really matter, though. That was the problem.

This was an early work, and he makes enough adjustments to let me enjoy his later writing more. I found this pretty hard to like.

Not recommended unless you really love Dickens in general.

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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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Where It Ran a Bit Long

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not my favorite Dickens novel. I kinda thought I was gonna really like it, too.

TBH, it's just too damn long with too many unnecessary side characters. You can say that with some justice about every Dickens novel, but this time I really mean it. Over a thousand pages, with probably only about 400 of them fun to read, with a dozen subplots, about half of which are properly tied up.

Dickens likes to dwell on the arrogant and ignorant and obnoxious and haughty and slimy characters, and I suppose that's his charm, for some. Sometimes I can enjoy his villains and lowlifes and antagonists, like Flintwich and Clennam's mother. For the most part, though, I like the good guys, the underdogs, the kind ones, the morally defensible people. Here, that's Little Dorrit (Amy) and Mr. Clennam and just a couple others. But instead of making the story about them--which it absolutely is, particularly at the end--we get Mr. Dorrit and his rotten daughter Fanny, and the tedious Mr. Gowan and Pet and Tattycoram and Miss Wade, and Mr. Merdle the fraud along with all the rotten folks at the Circumlocution Office. Then all those people fall away, sometimes moving the plot forward but mostly not, and we finally get back to the people that matter. Visually, the story arc is a curve at the beginning and a curve at the end with miles of scribbles in the middle.

IMO.

I support his rhetorical goals for the most part: describing the grief of poverty and futility of debtor's prison, the uselessness of government bureaucracy, the lure and false promise of unregulated investing and speculating, and the disgusting self-congratulations of wealth. I'm not as keen on duty as he is, but I can appreciate loyalty in any case, and humility, and patience, all of which he gives to a few characters like Little Dorrit and Mr. Doyce. I just wish their stories hadn't been shared with so many dull and pointless others.

Some things to like, anyway. But I'm not gonna read a Dickens novel for awhile. This wore me out.

YMMV.

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Where I Finally Read the Original Thing

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I got this as a gift last year and saved it up to read at Christmastime. I'm happy to say that it didn't disappoint.

Of course, I know the story pretty well. Lots of different movie versions going around. I even read an easy version with my ESL students back in the day. But reading the original is always the best, and I was pleased to see that I enjoyed it more than expected.

The story, separated from the original text (and plopped into a cartoon or the like), doesn't fell much like Dickens to me, but reading the real thing I finally got it. It really is Dickens. There are lots of characters, lots of details, lots of ironic lines, even in this short novella, that make it read like his other books, and I like how it came together. The three ghosts device is pretty clever, and having Scrooge eavesdropping on conversations he can't enter into, hearing what people really think about him, is a brilliant conceit. Nothing could ever be more honest--more brutal, too--than hearing what they say in their private homes, and it leaves Scrooge without any way to argue the point or shout them down. He has to listen and is basically convicted by their testimony, even in his own heart. We're so used to the story that these events don't much stand out, but I think it's a pretty impressive plot device.

Dickens' long books are generally a pleasure to read in their own way, filled with subplots and meanderings, but I really liked how quick this one reads. It's quite nice for a change to have it be so brief.

Even those who don't care for Dickens would probably enjoy this novella. It's pretty accessible for a number of reasons and doesn't take too much time to get through. And Dickens fans in particular should all find a lot to like here (if they haven't already).

So recommended for most readers. :)

I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry a a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody!

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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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I Liked Pip in the End

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think this novel does some amazing things. I understand why some people would rank this so high.

But it's less pleasant to read (IMO, always) than most of his other novels, at least until near the end. Splitting the difference between how much I liked it and how I felt about the themes and character development, I feel it deserves about 4/5 stars.

The main problem for me is that Pip is pretty much a jerk for most of the novel. It's not entirely his fault, of course, but it doesn't make him a great protagonist. That's the same for Estella, to an even greater degree, and it's kinda the point of the novel: wealth, real or in the offing, is bad for people. The wealth Pip is expecting damages him, warps the people around him, and hurts his relationships. This makes him a drag to follow around as a reader. (Do I have to say "In my opinion"?) When he starts to see things more clearly, when he starts to have some moral intuitions that push him a new way, I like it more. I really prefer him when he is more sympathetic.

I like the ending of the novel in general and the very very end specifically, though Dickens originally had a different ending that I definitely would have liked less. Now I sorta wish I knew what the "real" ending was, whatever that means when speaking of fictional characters in a fictional tale...

Anyway, still worth reading, even if only to be able to know what people are talking about when they say stuff about Miss Havisham. :)

Recommended.



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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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Where I Went and Had All the Emotions

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am and have been a Charles Dickens resister. Studied English in college; became an English teacher; read lots of books by lots of people; and had never finished a Dickens book until a few years ago. I didn't like the way he wrote and I didn't like his stories.

Until I did. And I really liked David Copperfield.

You have to have patience when you read Dickens. He has his way of getting to the point and working out the plot. If you don't have time for patience, like I didn't most of my life, it's tough going. But with more time for old books, my perspective has changed.

Dickens will give you sweet young women--here we have Agnes. She's adorable and impossible not to love. He gives you odd and creepy villains--here we have Uriah Deep, the creepy, insinuating, false manipulator, and Steerforth, who seems like a good guy but really disapoints. He gives you characters of deep moral conviction--here we have his old nurse and Mr. Peggotty. He gives you odd peripheral characters--here we have his great aunt and Mr. Dick, who are both a bit off but likable, and the Micawbers, who also have their failings but turn out to be important to the story and good friends to David. And you usually have at least one hard-working, humble young man, who in this case is the protagonist, but we also have his friend Tommy Traddles.

I was surprised to learn that some high schools use David Copperfield. As much as I like the book, that is (IMO) a bad idea. There is so much to get through (that patience I was talking about) to reach the good parts and the scenes that matter and the scenes that are any fun that most students would be exhausted with the effort before they got through it. Besides the difficulty of the style and the elevated language, there are cultural differences (for American students) that need to be explained in practically every page, and every one of those adds to the complexity that would make the instruction a bit like hacking your way through the wilderness.

Having said that--for someone approaching the novel voluntarily, with no pressure and no expectations, it can be great fun. I plan to see the Dev Patel adaptation and wanted to read the book first, and I am glad I did. I was emotionally invested, engaged with the characters, eager to see how it all turned out, and satisfied with the ending. Good stuff.

And to that young woman English major in a couple of my English classes at Queen's University in Kingston back around 1985, the one who always carried a copy of some Dickens book or another and wanted to talk about it: I wish I remembered your name so I could tell you that it was one particular image--you with a big old paperback copy of The Old Curiosity Shop, actually--that inspired me to try again until I saw something of what you saw. Here's to you, wherever you are! :)

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Where I Fall in Love with Little Nell Like Everybody Else

The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There was a time when I didn't like Charles Dickens at all and didn't plan on trying to like him.

• Too long. I didn't have that kind of time. I only had time for my favorite authors, and not all of them.
• I am not a fan of stories about terrible things happening in a dreadful world. When does that get fun?

Now that I have more free time, I'm willing to use some of it to read books that I'm kinda curious about. And I find i *do* like Charles Dickens.

Okay, I still don't like the long stretches of horrible things happening to sympathetic characters, matched by long stretches of terrible people getting away with stuff. That takes some energy to read through. And even in the end, there's some of that sadness that I don't approve of...

But there is a payoff (here and in other Dickens novels). The unfair, cruel, sad things happen, yes; but some characters succeed despite it all, and the bad guys get pretty pummeled. (Forgive the spoilers--but if you've read ANY Dickens, you already know this.) I seldom get emotional when reading, but twice it's been with this author: Tale of Two Cities and this one. That's why I give The Old Curiosity Shop 4 stars; I don't love all of it, but damned if he didn't make me care for fictitious characters again and grieve their end. That's some astonishing magic.

He justifies his authorial cruelty with an argument I actually found pretty compelling:

Oh! it is hard to take to heart the lesson that such deaths will teach, but let no man reject it, for it is one that all must learn, and is a mighty, universal Truth. When Death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world, and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. In the Destroyer’s steps there spring up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to Heaven.

I surely felt the coming of that gentler nature; I witnessed those bright creations springing up to defy the Destroyer's power. There's a profound sweetness in the novel's conclusion--call it melodramatic if you must, but don't dismiss it only for that--a sweetness that must be like-minded human spirits coming into contact, if only for a moment. That doesn't happen every day. That's worth something.

And then he finishes with some good characters triumphing, living and loving joyfully, their enemies brought low. The grieving, then the celebration. It works.

On top of all this, I got to read it in a vintage edition given to me as a gift by my family. That's the only way to read classics, IMO. That old book smell is a powerful argument for engaging with a book you're uncertain about, and the touch of a loved one makes it even better.

I'll pass over the novel's flaws and say only that, on the balance, it was well worth the time I spent on it. You might think so, too.

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