A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

 

Title: A Tale of Two Cities

Author:  Charles Dickens

Narrated by:  Simon Vance

Publisher: Tantor Audiobook Classics

Length: Approximately 13 hours and 39 minutes

Source: Audiobook Purchased from Audible (free on Audible)

Are you a fan of Charles Dickens?  If so, what is your favorite Dickens novel?

Dr. Alexandre Manette is wrongfully imprisoned in the Bastille for eighteen years.  After his release, he is reunited with his daughter, Lucie.  She marries Charles Darney and life is good, until the family is tricked into going to Paris during the French Revolution.  They will learn the truth of their past and the value of sacrifice and friendship.

My thoughts on this novel:

·       This was the January pick for the Back to the Classic Book Club at the Kewaunee Public Library.  It prompted a good discussion.

·       I had not read this book since high school, so it was due for a reread.

·       I listened to the audiobook and read along in a physical copy. 

·       This was different than other Dickens novels as this was written as historical fiction during this lifetime.

·       It appeared that everyone at book club enjoyed this book, although we had troubles at times with following the actions of all the characters throughout the novel.  Especially as some characters shared the same name.  This was especially confusing while listening to the audiobook!

·       This novel as the best opening and closing lines of a novel of all time.  “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”  “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

·       The two cities of the novel are London and Paris, but the Paris scenes to me were the most memorable.

·       This was a great story.  Why was Madame Defarge so vengeful?  The reader finally gets the reasons behind her vengeance at the end of the novel.  It took Madame Defarge from being a cartoon villain to a woman who deeply loved her family and wanted vengeance for their abuse and death.

·       It was a great story of the French Revolution.  It really explains why average citizens were so mad and took their vengeance.  Unfortunately, vengeance can go too far and innocent people got swept up in the fury.

·       The female main part was underwritten.  Lucie Manette is just pretty and simple.  It was hard to see why men were literally ready to die for her.

·       Sidney Carton was the best written character with shades of grey.  I wish that the reader was able to learn more about his background.

·       I was horrified by the Marquis carriage running over a child at the beginning of the novel and how he didn’t care at all.

Overall, A Tale of Two Cities is a must-read classic about the French Revolution with a great story and memorable characters and quotes.

The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

 

Title:  The Old Curiosity Shop

Author:  Charles Dickens

Narrated by:  Anton Lessor

Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks

Length: Approximately 22 hours and 19 minutes

Source: Checked out with Libby through the Kewaunee Public Library.  Thank-you!

 

What is your favorite Charles Dickens novel?  I would have to say A Christmas Carol as I’ve read it so many times.  David Copperfield is my second favorite with probably A Tale of Two Cities as number three.  Dickens wrote a number of memorable novels.  The Old Curiosity Shop is probably one of his lesser-known novels.  It was one of the most popular novels during his lifetime, but it is not as popular to modern audiences.

The Old Curiosity Shop tells the story of Little Nell Trent.  She lives in the old curiosity shop with her Grandfather.   Her Grandfather loves her beyond measure, but he is secretly gambling all of their money and money he has borrowed. They lose everything and wander the countryside trying to find a safe haven and to stay out of the grip of the evil Daniel Quilp.  They meet many interesting characters along the way.

This was the March pick for the Back to the Classics Book Club at the Kewaunee Public Library.  The book club enjoyed the novel and had a great discussion about it earlier this week.  Dickens writes such great characters and was able to bring them back together to wrap up storylines at the end.  He also had such a way with words that really resonated with the group.  We also discussed that the main premise of the book was an in-depth look at the addiction of gambling and how it can ruin many lives.

I had read this book years ago (review here) and I went with an audio version this time around.  I loved narrator Anton Lessor’s unique voices for all of the characters In particular, I loved his Daniel Quilp.  I just had a hard time with the audio quality.  I was playing this through Libby on my phone and I had a hard time hearing it at times such as when the narrator was whispering.  I don’t usually have this problem with audiobooks.  One downfall of listening to it on audiobook was that there were so many characters and many were just cameos, that it was hard to keep track of them all.  It would have been nice to has a physical copy with a list of characters as one book club member had.  I did find myself laughing out loud while listening to it as Dickens has such a great sense of humor in his writing and such perfect descriptions.  I love how he names his characters.

I think this story hasn’t held up as well as others because there are just too many characters and the story wanders away from main characters, such as Nell, for too long of periods of time.  Dickens improved on his pacing and keeping focused on his central characters in his later works.  I did find it interesting to learn that Nell was based on his sister-in-law who passed away in her teens.

The Old Curiosity Shop is a good Victorian novel.  We will be watching a film version of it in April at our next book club meeting.

Favorite Quote:

“Because the memory of those who lie below, passes away so soon. At first they tend them, morning, noon, and night; they soon begin to come less frequently; from once a day, to once a week; from once a week to once a month; then, at long and uncertain intervals; then, not at all. Such tokens seldom flourish long. I have known the briefest summer flowers outlive them.”

Haunted Tales Edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger

 

Do you have a favorite ghost story, book, movie, or character?  I used to love Caspar the friendly ghost when I was growing up.  We are currently watching the show Ghosts on Paramount Plus.  My favorite ghost story is probably the Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

I was happy to be able to review Haunted Tales, Edited by Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger.  It is a perfect book for the season.  It is a great collection of “classic stories of ghosts and the supernatural.”  The book starts with an interesting introduction by editors Lisa Morton and Leslie S. Klinger.  It discusses how the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century also brought about mass murder.  The Napoleonic wars killed more than four million people.  Those left behind were looking for new ways to communicate with their loved ones.  Ghost stories became a popular genre.  They were found in popular magazines and were especially popular at Christmas time, for example the spirits in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. They were published all year round though and not just for holidays.

I loved how this anthology included stories from well-known authors such as Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, and Virginia Woolf, but I loved even more that it included stories from authors that were popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth century but aren’t as well read now.  At the start of each story, there was a biography of the author. I like the biographies as much as the stories.  There were great footnotes throughout the stories to fill in the historical references. 

I found the stories to be fascinating and spooky.  They gave gothic vibes which would thrill Catherine Morland from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.  All of these stories were new to me, and I was happy to finally read “The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde”.  I have to admit, “The Canterville Ghost” was my absolute favorite story in this collection.  It was both hilarious and heartwarming.  It was also beautifully written.  The Canterville Ghost is pretty proud of all of his shenanigans through the years, but when an American Minister and his family move into the estate, he can’t seem to scare them.  Worse still, the young twin sons start to terrify the ghost.  It is the daughter of the family though who really figures out the mystery of the Canterville Ghost.  I thought “They” by Rudyard Kipling was a poignant story especially knowing from the bio at the start of the story that he had lost his own young child. 

I also enjoyed the Gothic splendor of “The Cold Embrace” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon.  “He was an artist – such things as happened to him happen sometimes to artists.  He was a German – such things as happened to him happen sometimes to Germans.  He was young, handsome, studious, enthusiastic, metaphysical, reckless, unbelieving, heartless.  And being young, handsome and eloquent, he was beloved.”  He loves his cousin Gertrude, and she loves him.  They promise to devote each other until death, but while his love strays, Gertrude’s remains even after death. 

One last story call out was “M. Anastasius” by Dinah Mulock.  Charles Dickens himself thought it was the best ghost story ever written.  I enjoyed it.  It was also Gothic and haunting about two young lovers that are haunted by the ghost of the young woman’s guardian who was lost at sea. 

I loved in the notes for “The Canterville Ghost” that it discussed that the phrase in this story “England and America are two countries divided a common language” was first seen in this story although it is commonly attributed to George Bernard Shaw.  I had just seen this elsewhere lately attributed to Shaw and I thought this was interesting information.

I highly recommend this collection for lovers of all spooky tales!

Review Copy from Pegasus Books.  Thank-you! I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

We read A Christmas Carol for our book club this month.  Books have been delayed through the library, so we wanted to make sure that we had a book to read.  We’ve now set up books through summer so we can order books ahead of time.  Have you had to make any changes with book club due to COVID?

 A Christmas Carol is a class story and I’ve reviewed it a few times on this blog.  I’m not going to go through the synopsis again, but I noticed this time that the version I’ve been reading since childhood was abridged!  I read the full version this time.  It’s such a short novel, I’m not sure why they abridged it.  All I could think of that they took out is that Dickens is VERY descriptive about food.  I loved the description.    The kindle version I read was a Penguin classic version and I really liked the introduction.  It gave great information about Charles Dickens and his Christmas novels.

 In book club, we noted that the book gets quite dark, when the third spirit shows people bartering over Scrooge’s belongings.  It was sad that people took the blankets and clothes from his dead body. 

 A Christmas Carol is such a part of our culture now with plays, musicals, movies, TV shows, cartoons, audiobooks, kids’ books, retellings, etc.  It’s amazing.  My personal favorite is Mickey’s Christmas Carol and I also love the 1938 movie staring Reginald Owen.  Dickens usually wrote such long novels, it is funny that his most endearing book is one of his shortest.

 What are your thoughts about Christmas Carol?

 Book Source:  I read an antique version I bought years ago and a kindle Penguin classic version I bought from Amazon.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Title:  Oliver Twist

Author: Charles Dickens

Read by:  Fiona Hardingham

Publisher: AmazonClassics Edition

Length: Approximately 16 hours and 14 minutes

Source: Purchased from Amazon.com. 

Oliver Twist was the Back to the Classics pick for January.  While I’ve read several Dickens novels, I had never read Oliver Twist.  I have a hatred for the musical after being forced to watch it in middle school, but I surprisingly didn’t remember much of the story besides, “Please Sir, I’d like some more.”  I both read and listened to this book.  I really like the Amazon feature that links together the audiobook and the kindle edition.  It was a great way to experience this novel.

We had a small book club gathering in January due to the warm weather of the South calling away some of our members from our northern Wisconsin clime.  We still had a good discussion and I look forward to discussing Dickens again in the future with the Back to the Classics Book Club.

Oliver Twist was a surprising look into the dark side of Victorian England.  The Poor Act had just been passed as society was sure that the poor were taking advantage of the system.  Dickens used his experiences as a child to show what life was life for the poor in England.  Oliver Twist was born in a poor house by his unwed mother who passes away shortly after his birth.  Oliver lives in a system where those in charge take advantage of the system.  They complain about the poor while they feast on fine food with fine silver.  The woman attending his mother at this birth stole the medicine that was left.  Alcohol meant for medicine for the poor was used for fun by those in charge.  I was horrified, but it was interesting to see corruption has not started just in modern times. 

After a series of unfortunate events, Oliver runs away to London, he was taken in by Fagan’s gang.  Fagan is referred to as “The Jew” throughout the novel, which was jarring.  This novel was published as a serial.  Audiences reading it at the time complained and Dickens lessoned his use of the term.  Oliver is an innocent amongst the thieves. It had a great adventure story with Fagan’s gang, and how Oliver kept getting swept into and out of the gang.  Bill Sykes is one of the evilest villains in literature.  The story of his and Nancy’s relationship is an interesting and sad look into domestic abuse.

This was only the second novel written by Dickens, and we discussed that you could certainly tell.  The end of the novel was very scattered, and frankly parts did not make sense.  I also watched a couple of film versions of Oliver Twist.  It was interesting how they tightened up the ending and made it make more sense.  I thought it was interesting that the 2005 version didn’t look at all in Oliver Twist’s heritage, which was a major focus of the novel.  We also discussed how this would have been one of the first “social” novels that took a look at how the lower classes lived at the time.  It would have been very different than other literature at the time.

Favorite Quotes:

“Please, sir, I want some more.”

“For the rest of his life, Oliver Twist remembers a single word of blessing spoken to him by another child because this word stood out so strikingly from the consistent discouragement around him.”

“You shall read them if you behave well,” said the old gentleman kindly; “and you will like that, better than looking at the outsides, - that is, in some cases, because there are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”

Overall, Oliver Twist was a great look into the dark depths of social despair in Victorian England as well as a good adventure story. I’m glad I read it, but David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities are still my favorite Dickens novels.

Book Source:  E-book and Audiobook purchased from Amazon.com and I also read from an old antique copy I purchased from an antique store years ago. 

Marley by Jon Clinch

Who exactly was Jacob Marley?  How did his life impact that of Ebenezer Scrooge?  The two young men meet at Professor Drabb’s Academy for Boys where Jacob starts their friendship by conning young Ebenezer.  They later start a business together with Jacob Marley as the figurehead who works with people to put together the business plan and Ebenezer Scrooge as the man who is great with the numbers.  While Marley seems to drift into a world of sin and hedonism, Ebenezer joins his church’s choir and finds love with his sister fan’s friend, Belle.  As he tries to accumulate the wealth needed to marry her, will he be able to cut himself free of Marley’s web of deceit?

I thought Marley was an interesting Victorian novel.  It gave background to one of my favorite Dickens stories, A Christmas Carol.  Marley is a figure in that story, but so much is unknown.  This novel fleshed out a lot of the detail.  Although it is called Marley, it is really the story of both men as it either centers on Scrooge or Marley.  I thought it was interesting that is has their fortune being made through the slave trade.  Scrooge wants to get out of it, but Marley uses his double crossing to cheat Scrooge and continue to make money off of it.  Marley was truly a despicable character, even his true love for Fan was tainted.   It made me sad for Scrooge that he wanted to have a good life, and he got caught up in Marley’s tainted life and web.  I thought it was also interesting that Scrooge was written such that he might be autistic with his great head for numbers, but inability to connect with people.  I also loved that the author referenced other Dicken’s tales by having characters and many of Marley’s aliases use names from other books like Steerforth and Macawber from David Copperfield.

Matthew Lloyd Davies was a great narrator.  I liked his accent and his narration style.  There was a small cast of characters in this book with it mostly centering on Scrooge, Marley, Scrooge’s sister Fan, Fan’s friend Belle, and Mother Scrooge.  I felt like I got to really know them as the novel went forward, although Marley still remained mysterious to me.  Where was his family and what was his background before he came to the school?  What started him on his path of deceit? 

Overall, Marley was an interesting look into the dark Victorian history that formed the miserly Scrooge’s character.  I came out caring more for Scrooge and resenting Marley more.