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jaina8851's review
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
I mainly got started on reading this book because I wanted to read the source material before reading Demon Copperhead and found it to be quite an odyssey to get through it. This book is long!! It's breezy and unexpectedly funny, there were several moments that had me laughing out loud. But it still took me much longer than I expected to finish it. I ended up reading the last 8% with a dual audiobook/ebook approach and a part of me wishes I had read the whole book that way because the narrator did really good accents. I really liked the way there were character threads that wove in very long stitches throughout this story, where a hint was dropped and you wouldn't see a character for hundreds of pages, and then back they'd pop. And I also have always relished Dickens' skill with names. I really knew nothing about this story before reading this, and yet somehow could tell who the villains were just by their names. The foreshadowing also was just lovely, there were many details that I could see coming but not in a way that I found tedious, because the payoff when it actually played out was so good. A LONG book but a good one. Very excited to get started on Demon Copperhead now too!!
theag7's review against another edition
5.0
It was so long o.o But worth it? Yes indeed! I already loved Dickens due to A Tale of Two Cities (plus the somewhat fictionalized account of him and his genius from the film The Man Who Invented Christmas), but the humor and character creation of DC was even better and highly interesting since the stories of this book recount bits of the author's own growing-up.
gabudell's review against another edition
5.0
A truly beautiful book!
This was the first Dickens I’ve read (excluding the compulsory reading of A Christmas Carol for GCSE English). Originally, I was put off by the size of the novel but if not for it’s length I feel the emotional impact that was to come towards the end of the novel would’ve been lost - (I was so happy to see the union of Agnes and David - I was a fan of their relationship from the start, even when it was just a friendship).
Dickens has such a way with words that he somehow managed to even make me feel emotional at the death of Dora (who I found increasingly irritable throughout). But my favourite part of the novel, by far, was the eccentric charters - from the sinister Uriah Heep to humorous Micawbers - and how wholesome of a story it was. All the characters managed to create a special place in my heart (minus Dora and Heep) but special mentions go to Mr Peggotty and Betsey Trotwood. Huge found-family vibes throughout.
I would highly recommend :)
This was the first Dickens I’ve read (excluding the compulsory reading of A Christmas Carol for GCSE English). Originally, I was put off by the size of the novel but if not for it’s length I feel the emotional impact that was to come towards the end of the novel would’ve been lost - (I was so happy to see the union of Agnes and David - I was a fan of their relationship from the start, even when it was just a friendship).
Dickens has such a way with words that he somehow managed to even make me feel emotional at the death of Dora (who I found increasingly irritable throughout). But my favourite part of the novel, by far, was the eccentric charters - from the sinister Uriah Heep to humorous Micawbers - and how wholesome of a story it was. All the characters managed to create a special place in my heart (minus Dora and Heep) but special mentions go to Mr Peggotty and Betsey Trotwood. Huge found-family vibes throughout.
I would highly recommend :)
knewberr's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
bocker_enligt_angelica's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
blindedbynature's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.75
daja57's review against another edition
4.0
The first problem that a modern reader is likely to encounter with Copperfield is its length. It's about 360,000 words, about four or five times as long as a typical modern novel (although, to be fair, it's only about half as long as the Bible); the Audible audiobook lasts 34.5 hours. A lot happens, but there are also some awfully long passages. Most people quail at the long descriptions but they seemed proportionate to me (and sometimes brilliant). What I found difficult was the extended speeches, often very melodramatic, particularly when a character becomes distressed. Dickensian characters don't have stiff upper lips.
There are an awful lot of characters. I recently advised a fledgling novelist to reduce the number of characters in her draft novel because (a) it is difficult for the reader to keep track of multiple characters and (b) it is difficult for the author to create distinct and properly rounded characters if a new one pops up every so often. To be fair to Dickens, when you are writing what is in effect a whole life, there must inevitably be a lot of characters: one's early playmates, schoolfriends, early romantic attachments, workmates etc. To be fair to Dickens again, many of the characters he introduces reappear later in the book (although sometimes, as with the final appearances of Creakle, Heep and Littimer, these have the appearance of being rather forced and moralistic tying up of loose ends). To be fair to Dickens a third time, he introduces each character with a few sentences which make them instantly memorable; his characters often have a quirk or a catchphrase which he repeats in order to evoke them each time they appear. But, on the other hand, he fails, in my opinion, to create many fully rounded characters. Most of his characters, vivid though they may be, are caricatures. They're one dimensional. They never surprise the reader. Heep is a villain from start to end, Dora is a child-wife, Ham is the salt of the earth. These aren't people, they're puppets. Perhaps the only character who felt real was Rosa Dartle, though she's not so much a character as a way of using irony to point out the falseness and hypocrisy in other people, and in the (melodramatic) end she too was revealed as just another mask.
So I feel justified in what I told the new novelist. Dickens is extraordinary in that he can create characters that stick with you (by his tricks of quirk and catchphrase) but even he can't create a multiplicity of three-dimensional characters.
It's great fun, it's entertaining, but fundamentally, for me, this novel fails as a work of literature because Dickens fails to ask why his characters are as they are. For all his social campaigning (against workhouses in Oliver Twist, against abusive schools in Nicholas Nickleby, against abusive schools, and the Doctors' Commons, and the solitary system in prisons in Copperfield etc) Dickens accepted the basic Victorian social divide between the classes. Thus our hero retains his dignity despite becoming a poor labourer ("I worked, from morning until night, with common men and boys, a shabby child." (Ch 11), there being no suggestion that DC himself is 'common')and a homeless (Dickens uses the word "houseless") tramp, because he is of good birth; he is rescued by his aunt who lives on her investments. Steerforth may be a cad but he is a gentleman and therefore David ultimately forgives him. Peggoty and Barkis and Ham and the other picturesque members of the working servant classes are tolerated because they know their place. Heep, on the other hand, commits the unforgivable sin of resenting his lower class birth and wanting to better himself (He does have a couple of pages in which he talks about his low birth and how being "umble" was his way to rise but Dickens seems to have cut him no slack on this account.)
(This reminds me of Oliver Twist. The eponymous hero is an orphan who grows up in a workhouse. One would have expected him to have been brutalised. But Dickens, in an introduction to the novel, explained that he wanted to write a story which showed that those of gentle birth would, despite their circumstances, retain their innate nobility and in so doing he created one of the most unbelievable title characters in literature.)
David Copperfield is a pantomime with goodies and baddies.
But the scenery is brilliant. He can describe something so that you are immediately in the picture.
Rather too long; otherwise very entertaining with a huge cast of eccentric and memorable, but not very credible, characters.
There are an awful lot of characters. I recently advised a fledgling novelist to reduce the number of characters in her draft novel because (a) it is difficult for the reader to keep track of multiple characters and (b) it is difficult for the author to create distinct and properly rounded characters if a new one pops up every so often. To be fair to Dickens, when you are writing what is in effect a whole life, there must inevitably be a lot of characters: one's early playmates, schoolfriends, early romantic attachments, workmates etc. To be fair to Dickens again, many of the characters he introduces reappear later in the book (although sometimes, as with the final appearances of Creakle, Heep and Littimer, these have the appearance of being rather forced and moralistic tying up of loose ends). To be fair to Dickens a third time, he introduces each character with a few sentences which make them instantly memorable; his characters often have a quirk or a catchphrase which he repeats in order to evoke them each time they appear. But, on the other hand, he fails, in my opinion, to create many fully rounded characters. Most of his characters, vivid though they may be, are caricatures. They're one dimensional. They never surprise the reader. Heep is a villain from start to end, Dora is a child-wife, Ham is the salt of the earth. These aren't people, they're puppets. Perhaps the only character who felt real was Rosa Dartle, though she's not so much a character as a way of using irony to point out the falseness and hypocrisy in other people, and in the (melodramatic) end she too was revealed as just another mask.
So I feel justified in what I told the new novelist. Dickens is extraordinary in that he can create characters that stick with you (by his tricks of quirk and catchphrase) but even he can't create a multiplicity of three-dimensional characters.
It's great fun, it's entertaining, but fundamentally, for me, this novel fails as a work of literature because Dickens fails to ask why his characters are as they are. For all his social campaigning (against workhouses in Oliver Twist, against abusive schools in Nicholas Nickleby, against abusive schools, and the Doctors' Commons, and the solitary system in prisons in Copperfield etc) Dickens accepted the basic Victorian social divide between the classes. Thus our hero retains his dignity despite becoming a poor labourer ("I worked, from morning until night, with common men and boys, a shabby child." (Ch 11), there being no suggestion that DC himself is 'common')and a homeless (Dickens uses the word "houseless") tramp, because he is of good birth; he is rescued by his aunt who lives on her investments. Steerforth may be a cad but he is a gentleman and therefore David ultimately forgives him. Peggoty and Barkis and Ham and the other picturesque members of the working servant classes are tolerated because they know their place. Heep, on the other hand, commits the unforgivable sin of resenting his lower class birth and wanting to better himself (He does have a couple of pages in which he talks about his low birth and how being "umble" was his way to rise but Dickens seems to have cut him no slack on this account.)
(This reminds me of Oliver Twist. The eponymous hero is an orphan who grows up in a workhouse. One would have expected him to have been brutalised. But Dickens, in an introduction to the novel, explained that he wanted to write a story which showed that those of gentle birth would, despite their circumstances, retain their innate nobility and in so doing he created one of the most unbelievable title characters in literature.)
David Copperfield is a pantomime with goodies and baddies.
But the scenery is brilliant. He can describe something so that you are immediately in the picture.
Rather too long; otherwise very entertaining with a huge cast of eccentric and memorable, but not very credible, characters.