A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
A classic read that was chosen as a monthly book club read. If it had not been a book I am committed to being able to intelligently speak about I would not have finished it. It is very wordy. There are times it reminded me that Dickens published most work in monthly magazines and was probably paid by the word count. Not a nice thought and distracting. But by the end I was entertained but also reminded why Dickens is not one of my favourites.
My biggest knock is that I never immersed into the story and experience the action as one of the characters. I am not sure I even knew any of the characters that well. Darnay left me wondering what he really cared about, and why Lucie fell for him. Lucie was described as a pretty blonde, but we never know her mind or heart. The banker Lorry is a fit vehicle to move the story, and the lawyer Styvner certainly strives to advance himself. So the caricatures that Dickens often employs rear their heads. There are good people and bad, but little nuance. In this case there are good cities (London) and bad (Paris) and the reality of life for people in either city is never explored. Which is something I want from great literature.
I loved the dialog. When characters are speaking to each other, I had a sense of watching a battle of wits, and enjoyed the words, the cadence, and the push and pull, thrust and parry of the interactions. The language and the vocabulary are stellar, as are the often unstated motives.
There were a couple of coincidences used to make the story work, and some name changes to keep this reader guessing. When Sydney Carton, who so resembles Darnay to get him acquitted in the first trial appears, I knew that resemblance would be used later in the book.
My wish is that this book had been more real, the characters more human, the hopes and fears more felt and experienced by the reader. That would have made this a great novel. I think this is a good book, not a great one.
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A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
ISBN 9781645171560