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stefreadsallthebooks's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
forever_day's review against another edition
3.0
Review for the Purnell abridged version:
This book was simulantaneously one I didn't particularly enjoy, while also being one I think is well written. The characters and observations about human nature make it worthwhile reading, but not gripping.
It was my first Dickens, and I liked his prose but not the plot. It generally landed on the depressing side of life, with limited moments of lightheartedness or even the characters having an acceptable time. I left it alone many months before forcing myself to finish it. I didn't not enjoy the experience of reading it while I was reading, but I was never so engrossed as to want to rush back to it. I only found out that I read the abridged version (~215 pages) when looking for the edition, so I don't know what aspects I might be missing, but I did not enjoy it enough to go hunting for the ~600 page version. The bulk of the book being a pair meandering with no destination and falling into various depressing situations was not to my taste.
Also, possibly because I left so many months between coming back to it, I found it hard to keep track of who everyone was. I did however, like that every loose end was tied up at the end. However, I didn't have any emotional connection to anyone.
There was one singular event that truly struck me while reading, which was Nell hearing someone coming in at night to steal something, only to turn and find out the thief is her own grandfather. That scene hit perfectly- the initial horror of something scary in the night and which then morphs into the horror of human weakness, being taken advantage of by someone who should love you and is simulataneously something to be feared and pitied. The scene hit truly in a way the rest of the book didn't.
This book was simulantaneously one I didn't particularly enjoy, while also being one I think is well written. The characters and observations about human nature make it worthwhile reading, but not gripping.
It was my first Dickens, and I liked his prose but not the plot. It generally landed on the depressing side of life, with limited moments of lightheartedness or even the characters having an acceptable time. I left it alone many months before forcing myself to finish it. I didn't not enjoy the experience of reading it while I was reading, but I was never so engrossed as to want to rush back to it. I only found out that I read the abridged version (~215 pages) when looking for the edition, so I don't know what aspects I might be missing, but I did not enjoy it enough to go hunting for the ~600 page version. The bulk of the book being a pair meandering with no destination and falling into various depressing situations was not to my taste.
Also, possibly because I left so many months between coming back to it, I found it hard to keep track of who everyone was. I did however, like that every loose end was tied up at the end. However,
Spoiler
one character dies at the end, and I was mildly disappointed but not truly sad becauseThere was one singular event that truly struck me while reading, which was Nell hearing someone coming in at night to steal something, only to turn and find out the thief is her own grandfather. That scene hit perfectly- the initial horror of something scary in the night and which then morphs into the horror of human weakness, being taken advantage of by someone who should love you and is simulataneously something to be feared and pitied. The scene hit truly in a way the rest of the book didn't.
aegisnyc's review against another edition
4.0
While his writing's occasionally over-sentimental, I love how Dickens sketches characters so cleanly. Now I ride the subway and sit in meetings wondering how he'd describe the people around me. Just saw the NYC School Chancellor Joel Klein on NY1 and he comPLETEly looks like he was created by Dickens. Plus, now that Nell and her grandfather are on the road and meeting strangers and passing through situations, sometimes harmless, sometimes threatening, I keep being reminded of The Road. Anyway, I'm enjoying this.
gjmaupin's review against another edition
4.0
Your Basic Dickens. I enjoyed the carnival-ness of it all, and found intriguing how many unnamed major characters there are considering, you know, Dickens and the names. Dick Swiveller. Fanny Sparkler. The Cheerybles. And so.
Not my favorite in the canon, but worth my time.
Not my favorite in the canon, but worth my time.
bryce_is_a_librarian's review against another edition
3.0
Parts of it read like the grotesque nightmare verision of what people who don't read Victorian novels suppose them to be. Melodrama, moralizing, inward vice equated with outward deformity, a heroine that suffers like a character in a Lars Von Trier film.
But as always there is enough vividness, humor and vivacity in Dickens writing to compel the reader through whatever hugger mugger the narrative throws at them.
For real though, I would pay good money for a version of this book in which Little Nell straight up smothers her grandfather with a pillow halfway through.
But as always there is enough vividness, humor and vivacity in Dickens writing to compel the reader through whatever hugger mugger the narrative throws at them.
For real though, I would pay good money for a version of this book in which Little Nell straight up smothers her grandfather with a pillow halfway through.
michael5000's review against another edition
3.0
The biggest disappointment of The Old Curiosity Shop is that it has so very little to do with an old curiosity shop. This is simply not plain dealing. Using such a title lays out the promise that we readers will get to spend time lurking among oddities and knick-knacks considered quaint and queer even by people of the Victorian age, with all its massive trade surplus of old curiosities. But no, the shop in question is simply a location where things happen to happen (as it were) in the first few chapters, and for all the descriptions we are given it might as well be an old law office, or an old inn, or an old marine chandler’s shop, to choose three examples of businesses that Dickens made come to life far more vividly than he did this one.
Now, it may well be that Dickens’s original plan was more old-curiosity focused than the novel that actually got written. This is not as far-fetched as it may sound. Like many novels of the day, this one was originally published as a serial. Unlike most of them – at least unlike most of them that are still read today, anyway – Old Curiosity Shop shows clear evidence of major rethinking after the first bits were already in print. The first few chapters are told in first person by a narrator who meets a charming young girl in the street and helps her find her way home to – wait for it! – an old curiosity shop, where she lives with her grandfather. While he’s there, they receive colorful visitors, and Dickens starts to have trouble figuring out where to put his narrator while he’s overhearing all of the plot-laden conversations. Eventually, he gives up, and the narrator says something like “look, I’m just going to tell the rest of this story in third person,” then vanishes without a trace. It’s quite something.
So, it’s not at all unlikely that there is an unwritten novel here in which the narrator character stuck around and became significant, and much was made of the old curiosity shop and its old curios. But it probably isn’t a very good unwritten novel, or else Dickens wouldn’t have gone through the embarrassment of abandoning it so conspicuously.
The charming young girl, by the by, is the famous Little Nell, and you might have two notions about her. One is the crowds who gathered on the pier in the United States, begging people arriving from across the Atlantic to tell them whether Little Nell survived. This is a great story, but common sense warns us to be suspicious of the scale of the phenomenon. The second is Oscar Wilde’s quip that “one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without dissolving into tears . . . of laughter.” This is a great line, but a bit vague in its application, since Little Nell dies offstage. Certainly, most modern readers will, I think, find Little Nell a fairly insubstantial fluff of virtue, sympathize with Wilde, and wonder why the Americans were so invested in her survival. For myself, I only felt that she went from remarkably robust pluck to feeble ill-health with surprisingly little transition, although I might be wrong about this. Missing key transitions is a constant risk when you read by ear.
Plot: Nell is in the care of her grandfather, who is in the grips of gambling addiction. When he can not pay back the money he has borrowed from an evil dwarf – you heard me, an evil dwarf – he and Nell take to the road for a new life of privation and grinding poverty. A variety of secondary characters begin looking for the vagabonds for a variety of reasons, scheming with and against each other for comic and tragic effect. A young wastrel named Dick Swiveler and a waif he calls The Marchioness form an unlikely relationship that is nevertheless rather charming. But meanwhile, Nell’s health takes a sudden turn for the worse.
Prognosis: Although it is not as episodic as some of the Dickens novels, I found that Old Curiosity Shop had sections and scenes that I found effective and entertaining, and others that bored me to tears. This was, for instance, the alternative means I found for shedding tears over Little Nell’s unfortunate exit. I don’t think we’d be reading this book today if its author hadn’t written his masterpieces. But if we happened on it by chance in that alternative universe, we might still decide it was “neglected.”
Now, it may well be that Dickens’s original plan was more old-curiosity focused than the novel that actually got written. This is not as far-fetched as it may sound. Like many novels of the day, this one was originally published as a serial. Unlike most of them – at least unlike most of them that are still read today, anyway – Old Curiosity Shop shows clear evidence of major rethinking after the first bits were already in print. The first few chapters are told in first person by a narrator who meets a charming young girl in the street and helps her find her way home to – wait for it! – an old curiosity shop, where she lives with her grandfather. While he’s there, they receive colorful visitors, and Dickens starts to have trouble figuring out where to put his narrator while he’s overhearing all of the plot-laden conversations. Eventually, he gives up, and the narrator says something like “look, I’m just going to tell the rest of this story in third person,” then vanishes without a trace. It’s quite something.
So, it’s not at all unlikely that there is an unwritten novel here in which the narrator character stuck around and became significant, and much was made of the old curiosity shop and its old curios. But it probably isn’t a very good unwritten novel, or else Dickens wouldn’t have gone through the embarrassment of abandoning it so conspicuously.
The charming young girl, by the by, is the famous Little Nell, and you might have two notions about her. One is the crowds who gathered on the pier in the United States, begging people arriving from across the Atlantic to tell them whether Little Nell survived. This is a great story, but common sense warns us to be suspicious of the scale of the phenomenon. The second is Oscar Wilde’s quip that “one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without dissolving into tears . . . of laughter.” This is a great line, but a bit vague in its application, since Little Nell dies offstage. Certainly, most modern readers will, I think, find Little Nell a fairly insubstantial fluff of virtue, sympathize with Wilde, and wonder why the Americans were so invested in her survival. For myself, I only felt that she went from remarkably robust pluck to feeble ill-health with surprisingly little transition, although I might be wrong about this. Missing key transitions is a constant risk when you read by ear.
Plot: Nell is in the care of her grandfather, who is in the grips of gambling addiction. When he can not pay back the money he has borrowed from an evil dwarf – you heard me, an evil dwarf – he and Nell take to the road for a new life of privation and grinding poverty. A variety of secondary characters begin looking for the vagabonds for a variety of reasons, scheming with and against each other for comic and tragic effect. A young wastrel named Dick Swiveler and a waif he calls The Marchioness form an unlikely relationship that is nevertheless rather charming. But meanwhile, Nell’s health takes a sudden turn for the worse.
Prognosis: Although it is not as episodic as some of the Dickens novels, I found that Old Curiosity Shop had sections and scenes that I found effective and entertaining, and others that bored me to tears. This was, for instance, the alternative means I found for shedding tears over Little Nell’s unfortunate exit. I don’t think we’d be reading this book today if its author hadn’t written his masterpieces. But if we happened on it by chance in that alternative universe, we might still decide it was “neglected.”
msmagoo502's review against another edition
emotional
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
4.5
h_motionless's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
The Old Curiosity Shop is fun and cozy, while tense and bleak at times, and balances the two very well. The cast of characters is immaculate, especially the villainous Quilp who stands out as one of Dickens’ most detestable antagonists. My two major problems with the novel, however, are the extraordinarily slow pacing in the middle portion of the novel, and Dickens’ tendency to over-write seemingly insignificant scenes, while almost brushing over the scenes with potent emotional impact.