Where the Reformers Aren't All That Nice

Who Will Remember by C.S. Harris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Such a great series. I knew before I opened it I'd love this book--they've all been good, and only getting better.

Sebastian St. Cyr is a great MC, and the only character I like as much as him is his wife, Hero, who I'd really like to see played by Anna Maxwell or someone as nearly like her as possible. She's tough and smart and unafraid, but also kind and energetic and hopeful. They make a great pair in every sense, including crime-solving.

The setting, as always, is well used here. 1815, the year without a summer, is where we find Sebastian trying to solve the strange murder of a nobleman left hanging upside down in the ruins of an old church. It's raining all the time, as it did that summer, almost certainly because of a volcanic eruption on the other side of the world. Important scenes also take place in another ruins, an old palatial residence along the Thames. This is the time period when soldiers are returning from the war with Napoleon, many of them wounded, and trying to find a place in a society--a job, a family, a way to survive. (Hero is interviewing some of these veterans to write a story about the difficulties fighting men faced in that era.) The author is very good at using genuine details like these to establish a real sense of place and time to give the story an added level of gritty realness.

It's a great mystery with lots of clues and misdirection, but it's also an action story. There is genuine danger for Sebastian and Hero and a few others, and they have to act and react to survive; it's not cerebral effort alone, and I like that mix. A few of the novels in this long-running series lean pretty far toward the side of high stakes and high anxiety, giving the reader a lot of tension, and all of them (IMO) tend toward that side of the scale, more tense than cozy, but I'd put this one and quite a few of them pretty nearly in the center of that scale. (Not sure I'm making my thoughts clear. Hope so.)

These books are always fun. I read a lot of books (a little at a time) all at once, and this one stayed at the top of the the pile every day. Or I'd read a chunk of a book I'm only kinda enjoying with the promise that I'd read this one next. Which is to say--this is good fun.

Recommended.

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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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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 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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