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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
Another Dickens banger! I enjoyed the style of not following just one individual character even if it took me a minute to figure out who anybody was, but once we hit Part 2 of the book I got the hang of it and honestly loved the vibes. I'm fairly sure everything I could say about this book has been said but 10/10 should have read it sooner.
Because Dickens was born 200 years ago and because Tim Burns is my friend.
Me voilà une nouvelle fois confrontée à Dickens et un de ses romans dans le cadre universitaire. Ma rencontre initiale me voyait abandonner Oliver Twist après 2 mois et 50 pages seulement. Cette fois-ci, armée d'un peu plus de maturité et de maîtrise de la langue, je viens à bout de Tale of Two Cities !
Bon, j'admet que le style n'est pas particulièrement à mon goût et a considérablement ralenti ma lecture, mais les thèmes et le contexte historique m'ont certainement fait tourner les pages.
La justice (les injustices) sociale de l'époque, en Angleterre et en France, la prise de la Bastille, la Terreur et ses tribunaux sont présentés de manière aussi terrifiante que captivante. Malgré leur caractère plutôt unidimentionnel (favorisant leur mise en opposition), les personnages sont intéressants et attachants.
Un livre à relire et approfondir ? Et là, je me surprend et je dis "très certainement !".
Bon, j'admet que le style n'est pas particulièrement à mon goût et a considérablement ralenti ma lecture, mais les thèmes et le contexte historique m'ont certainement fait tourner les pages.
La justice (les injustices) sociale de l'époque, en Angleterre et en France, la prise de la Bastille, la Terreur et ses tribunaux sont présentés de manière aussi terrifiante que captivante. Malgré leur caractère plutôt unidimentionnel (favorisant leur mise en opposition), les personnages sont intéressants et attachants.
Un livre à relire et approfondir ? Et là, je me surprend et je dis "très certainement !".
adventurous
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Dickens' descriptions always make me feel like I'm right in the scene with his characters. This is a wonderful book, and if you have only read it because you had to, you may want to try it again, just for the fun of it.
adventurous
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
Like good wine I can't afford, my appreciation for classic literature needs to be kept in cold, dark places and taken out only when matured. I'm glad I dropped this book after the first sentence when I was 17. I wasn't ready for it. Now, more than a decade later I can savor each subtle twist and turn of Dickens. I can both detest the brutish rancor of Madame Defarge and hail her quote as one of the most powerful phrases I've ever experienced in literature.
"'... Tell the Wind and Fire where to stop,' returned Madame, 'but don't tell me."
Sweet Jesus, that's good literature.
"'... Tell the Wind and Fire where to stop,' returned Madame, 'but don't tell me."
Sweet Jesus, that's good literature.
Three years. Three attempts at reading this book. Today I read the final sentence. And it was beautiful.
What can I say about this novel that hasn't already been said? Dickens captures the grand, horrific frenzy of Revolution that sweeps through the streets of France purging the country so the Patriots can begin anew, creates heroes who epitomize love, loyalty, and self-sacrifice, and villains sinister and skilled, and crafts a story that slowly builds to a page-turning adventure and ends with scenes poetic and poignant.
Timeless story. Truly a classic, and well worth the read.
What can I say about this novel that hasn't already been said? Dickens captures the grand, horrific frenzy of Revolution that sweeps through the streets of France purging the country so the Patriots can begin anew, creates heroes who epitomize love, loyalty, and self-sacrifice, and villains sinister and skilled, and crafts a story that slowly builds to a page-turning adventure and ends with scenes poetic and poignant.
Timeless story. Truly a classic, and well worth the read.
This is my favorite of all the Dickens novels I have read to date (which puts it ahead of Bleak House, David Copperfield, and Oliver Twist). If I were to try and pinpoint the difference between A Tale of Two Cities and these other works, I would say that A Tale of Two Cities is sleeker, somehow. A little more...stylized, a little more...pared down, or distilled. I imagine that for these reasons, many literary critics have found it inferior to his other works in style or substance. Admittedly, part of what I have loved about Dickens in his other works is his tendency to throw out narrative branches all over the place, embracing an ever-widening and ever-stranger cast of characters in a story that unites misfits with Courts of Chancery, orphans, rogues, and ruffians with (questionably more respectable) parsons, Lords, and cigar-salesmen.
However, I think this mania of activity found elsewhere in Dickens's writing would detract from A Tale of Two Cities by distracting readers from the main thrust of the story, which appears (at least to me) to be about Justice, a hard and somber (as well as potentially joyful) subject. Over and over this book mentions "business," and I found myself eventually asking, "What is business? And Whose is it?" As in A Christmas Carol, Dickens seems to imply that life itself is a business--that each choice we make is a moral investment carrying the same potential for ruin and reward as monetary investments and that those who seek to gratify themselves at the expense of others will (perhaps literally) have Hell to pay one day. In one sense, Dickens seems to argue that the nobles of France only got what was coming to them: payment made for services rendered.
However, this idea of simple, business-like Retributive Justice is complicated by the fact that Charles Darnay is condemned to death along with all the other French nobility (despite his upright character and long residence in England). The fact that he is imprisoned and sentenced to death despite his innocence of any personal wrongdoing, despite even of his being the son-in-law of a man unjustly imprisoned for decades by an unfeeling French noble several years before, merely underscores the complicating question: can Justice that condemns innocent men to death really be Justice? Over the centuries, the privileged French nobles and clergy condemned innocent members of the "Third Estate" to imprisonment and death, to disease, starvation, brutalization, forced pregnancy, torture, dismemberment, and excommunication. Simple Retributive Justice (an eye for an eye...payment made for services rendered...) would dictate that the nobles must necessarily receive the same treatment. But is this really Justice? Can it be, if it comes at Charles Darnay's expense?
I found the character of Sidney Carton to be an absolute delight, ridiculous at times as all of us are, but somehow, despite his ridiculousness, never unworthy of my readerly affection and even admiration. Even several weeks after finishing the novel, I find "It comes surely" to be still echoing in my mind. I wonder how Carton, who more than any other character seems to embrace the idea of Retributive Justice (with the result of short-changing himself), ends up choosing to turn the idea of Retributive Justice on its head by standing in for the condemned.
Dickens never fully articulates an alternative to Retributive Justice, never expressly declares Mercy or Love to be superior to it. However, this novel does take resurrection as its secondary theme--I did not realize the number of times the idea of something being "unearthed" (literally and/or figuratively) recurs in this novel until I stopped to total it up. I would say it is no accident that this novel includes scenes of grave-robbery as well as murder and death.
Note: I did not actually read the Nonesuch edition of A Tale of Two Cities; however, this edition seems to come closer to the one I did read than the Barnes&Noble/Borders/Oxford/Signet/Penguin/Cambridge Classic paperback versions I see listed on here, and the edition I read out of is too old to have an ISBN number. (I assume there are not many textual differences between one edition of Dickens and another, but to be honest, I have no idea.)
However, I think this mania of activity found elsewhere in Dickens's writing would detract from A Tale of Two Cities by distracting readers from the main thrust of the story, which appears (at least to me) to be about Justice, a hard and somber (as well as potentially joyful) subject. Over and over this book mentions "business," and I found myself eventually asking, "What is business? And Whose is it?" As in A Christmas Carol, Dickens seems to imply that life itself is a business--that each choice we make is a moral investment carrying the same potential for ruin and reward as monetary investments and that those who seek to gratify themselves at the expense of others will (perhaps literally) have Hell to pay one day. In one sense, Dickens seems to argue that the nobles of France only got what was coming to them: payment made for services rendered.
However, this idea of simple, business-like Retributive Justice is complicated by the fact that Charles Darnay is condemned to death along with all the other French nobility (despite his upright character and long residence in England). The fact that he is imprisoned and sentenced to death despite his innocence of any personal wrongdoing, despite even of his being the son-in-law of a man unjustly imprisoned for decades by an unfeeling French noble several years before, merely underscores the complicating question: can Justice that condemns innocent men to death really be Justice? Over the centuries, the privileged French nobles and clergy condemned innocent members of the "Third Estate" to imprisonment and death, to disease, starvation, brutalization, forced pregnancy, torture, dismemberment, and excommunication. Simple Retributive Justice (an eye for an eye...payment made for services rendered...) would dictate that the nobles must necessarily receive the same treatment. But is this really Justice? Can it be, if it comes at Charles Darnay's expense?
I found the character of Sidney Carton to be an absolute delight, ridiculous at times as all of us are, but somehow, despite his ridiculousness, never unworthy of my readerly affection and even admiration. Even several weeks after finishing the novel, I find "It comes surely" to be still echoing in my mind. I wonder how Carton, who more than any other character seems to embrace the idea of Retributive Justice (with the result of short-changing himself), ends up choosing to turn the idea of Retributive Justice on its head by standing in for the condemned.
Dickens never fully articulates an alternative to Retributive Justice, never expressly declares Mercy or Love to be superior to it. However, this novel does take resurrection as its secondary theme--I did not realize the number of times the idea of something being "unearthed" (literally and/or figuratively) recurs in this novel until I stopped to total it up. I would say it is no accident that this novel includes scenes of grave-robbery as well as murder and death.
Note: I did not actually read the Nonesuch edition of A Tale of Two Cities; however, this edition seems to come closer to the one I did read than the Barnes&Noble/Borders/Oxford/Signet/Penguin/Cambridge Classic paperback versions I see listed on here, and the edition I read out of is too old to have an ISBN number. (I assume there are not many textual differences between one edition of Dickens and another, but to be honest, I have no idea.)
It was my first Dickens, it was not my last. It was summer in Chicago and I was surrounded by lovely albeit unruly children. Oh dear, it was a struggle at times, watching three kids while my wife and their mother were in the city. Still I finished the novel over a long afternoon without drugging my charges.
It is a story of sacrifice, maybe of redemption. I felt for everyone, zealots and drunkards alike. The concluding scaffold scene engendered tears, it has to be admitted. Is there a better novel about the French Revolution, its aspirations and its contradictions?
It is a story of sacrifice, maybe of redemption. I felt for everyone, zealots and drunkards alike. The concluding scaffold scene engendered tears, it has to be admitted. Is there a better novel about the French Revolution, its aspirations and its contradictions?