Some masochistic member of our book club has listed this for our upcoming meeting. Formatted as the fictitious autobiography of a coming-of-age British boy, this humongous classic by England’s most famous novelist of the 19th century has been reissued in a variety of updates. I read the 1869 edition as an ebook, wasting a good chunk of my limited reading time. In the early pages, it loosely reflects the experiences of the author as an orphaned child raised by an ever-changing variety of relatives in several southern England sites.
Filled with more truly evil characters than any reader could possibly keep track of, his early childhood is saturated with uncertainty and pathos. The extreme emotions describing his teen and early 20s all-consuming infatuations with girls are described in flowery language that goes on for many pages with too many exclamation marks. His abusive experiences in boy’s schools introduces him to a variety of those evil boys, most notably Uriah Heep, whose name has endured as the embodiment of unscrupulous cunning, greed and deceit. He would certainly fulfill the modern DSM-5 criteria for a diagnosis of psychopathic personality disorder. One of his school chums turns out to be an equally unscrupulous opportunist who secretly elopes to continental Europe with the betrothed bride-to-be of another youth.
His adult life is characterized by many ups and downs with numerous unexplained deaths and betrayals, but ultimately a happy family life as he becomes a famous and well off novelist like the author.
Obtuse language in very long winded conversations with many emotion-laden superlatives and exclamation marks are used to describe all of the characters. The narrative/conversation balance is severely tilted toward conversation. Run on sentences filling half a page abound and no characters say what they mean in straight forward language. The multitude of characters are as hard to keep straight as those in War and Peace.
The best quote that also expresses what I most dislike about the whole book is the author’s own observation that: “We like to talk about the tyranny of words, but we also like to tyrannize over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we like to think it sounds important and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is of secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them.” This is just a small portion of a much longer dissertation about communication.
Lots of Dickens’ misogyny shows through, but little of his well-known racism is expressed here, although there are a few negative comments about East Indians.
There is no mention of sexual intercourse whatsoever, as befits the prudish Victorian era, let alone any sexual improprieties, but just a faint hint that two female characters may have had a brief secret lesbian relationship. (I may have read too much into their love for one another, as there is a lot of kissing and hugging, seemingly as expressions of fondness irrespective of the gender of the pairs and a lot males also express their love for one another in superlative language.)
I quite enjoyed reading A Tale of Two Cities, and Oliver Twist years ago although they too are overly wordy, but I cannot recommend this one for anyone.
⭐️/10
The Passionate Reader 