btomczak's Full Review: Carol Hegarty and Carol Hegarty ( editor ) - A Tal...
I could have titled my opinion, "It was the best of books, it was the worst of books." (Ironically, one of my literary circle members critiqued the book this way, "It was the best of books, it was the worst of books -- naw, it just sucked!) Or, "it's a far, far better book than I have ever read." But I'm sure those get pretty old, pretty fast.
A Tale of Two Cities is another one of those books that everybody has read, or should read. At least that's what they say. And I suppose I would tend to agree.
The author, in case you didn't know, is Charles Dickens, who brought us such classics as Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Bleak House, The Christmas Carol and too many others to mention.
In this novel Dickens takes us back to revolutionary France, circa 1776-1793. Action also takes place in England, from which many of the main characters emanate.
Dickens has always been known as a genius at character creation, and this novel would really not be an exception. The Defarges, Sydney Carton, Lucie Manette, Dr. Manette and Jerry Cruncher are all fine examples of Dickensian characters with one weakness -- most are all one-dimensional. Madame Defarge is consumed with hatred of the upper class and never deviates from it. Lucie Manette is too simply good to be believed. Sydney Carton is perhaps the lone character emerging from this novel different than he began -- and it makes for tears.
Another weakness of the novel is the ambiguity of Dickens. Unlike David Copperfield and other monster volumes from his corpus, Dickens wrote Cities in a rather straightforward manner stylistically. He avoided the usual overabundance of dependant clauses that make some of his books take years to digest. Which would have been wonderful, had he not replaced it with ambiguous writing. The first 70 pages or so is terrible for it. Major characters and events are introduced and even a careful reader is left scratching his head at times wondering -- was someone just killed, who is this?
If you can get through those first 70 pages you are golden. The last half of the book more than makes up for the first 70 pages. The tapestry of the French Revolution, culminating in the bloody Reign of Terror creates an atmosphere of crazed indifference to life and provides for the exciting, emotional ending on the scaffold that, for my money, can't be beat.
In his opening paragraph Dickens warned his readers in 1850s England that the time was right for the events to happen in England which happened in France. His study of Revolutionary terror and fervor has left an indeliable impression on our hearts and minds. When most people think of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, they think of A Tale of Two Cities.
It was the time of the French Revolution...a time of great change and great danger. It was a time when injustice was met by a lust for vengeance, and ...More at Christianbook.com
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