Reviews - Hard Times | The StoryGraph

1.15k reviews for:

Hard Times

Charles Dickens

3.33 AVERAGE

h_motionless's review against another edition

2.75

challenging slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Hard Times communicates a lot about Victorian society’s industrialisation and working conditions, so I recognise its importance and impact, and many of its characters are great, especially Bounderby and Louisa - Dickens never fails to disappoint me with character work. My main gripes with the novel are the overall weaknesses of the plot itself, and the particularly annoying dialogue of Stephen and Sleary, whose accents and speech patterns make the text relatively difficult to decipher.

elemmakil's review against another edition

1.0

He was almost falling asleep over this compliment; it took him so long to get through, and his mind wandered so much in the course of its execution

Ironically, that quote could be a summary of me reading the book. Seriously, come on, if the guy is falling asleep because what he himself is saying is so boring, what can you expect from the reader?? G-sus.

Normally at this point of a review you'd summarise the plot in a couple of lines, but the story is so bad I can't be bothered, so I'll just keep whining about more general aspects of the book.

I had to read a couple of chapter of this book for a literature course and I thought I might just as well read the whole thing, but no, I couldn't finish it first. I actually didn't get past page 64 before giving up. There's just too much repetition of the same things so that we'd really understand the kinds of personalities the characters have. I know they are meant to be exaggerated caricatures, but I don't want to read the same line over and over again for 50 pages. And this is a fact (a joke, which you will get if you're foolish enough to venture to read the book).

After an hour of watching silly videos on Youtube I was like heck, I'm not going to give up! So I pushed through the whole book, so now I have more to say how bad this book is. The story is clearly a farce, though a bad one, and written in the form of a lengthy book. There's only one mildly pleasant and interesting character, Mr. Harthouse, SPOILER FOLLOWS, but all of a sudden he's just gotten rid of and we never see him again. WHY??? He was the only humane character in the whole book. I hate you, C. Dickens.

Dear Charles Dickens, I yet have to discover what's so great about your writing. So far it hasn't been too apparent.

maddycat8's review against another edition

2.0

This book, to me, I'm going to be honest, was extremely boring and depressing. Which is supposed to be the point I assume (the depressing part). Written by the infamous Charles Dickens its a stor where facts and "fancy"(imagination) contradict one another, and where its bad to both of them, and really its bad to just be fancy. Most of these characters are all fact based and show no emotion, it can make the book hard to read because there is really no happy moments in this book that I could find. Bad things happen to good people, bad people go on with their lives and dont' realize that they need imagination to live. If you read this book, be prepared for a not happy ending.

aayjaysbookshelf's review against another edition

4.25

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

My first proper Dickens read, so it took me a while to get the hang of it. Once I did, and through the help of Sparknotes, I really really enjoyed it. The more you think about it, the more you realise what an intelligently written book it is. Based in a fictional 17th century UK town, the book has the recurring theme of the war between fact Vs fiction. It touches on topics like hierarchy, social mobility, industrialization in the Victorian era, the class system, poverty and the likes. Although Dickens characters are mainly written in a black and white format i.e. the characters being either all good or all bad, but through the character of Louisa, Gradgrind and even Tom, Dickens explores also the grey areas of a human being. My favourite part of the book has to be the intelligent categorization of it into three parts and the individual names of the chapters. Charles Dickens has a clever way of navigating readers into thinking along his lines, giving the characters a sympathetic touch where he wants to evoke pity for them, and a cunning one where he wants to evoke disdain for them, without being too obvious about it. The storyline is really good as well, with each character and part of the story getting its due conclusion and no loose ends being left.
All in all, a good read. A very impactful insight into the 17th century England and the documentation of the advent of industrialization and the succumbing of agriculture and the old ways of life to it. The general mood of the novel is a melancholic one, and has been kept so intentionally to reflect the greyness and dullness the wave of industrialization brought with it. Highly recommend reading the Sparks note summary along with it to understand it better.

legalois's review against another edition

5.0

Check out my review on my blog http://youmeandacupofteablog.blogspot.com/2014/05/book-review-hard-times.html
Re-read in 2022- this might be my favorite Dickens novel. A masterful look at childhood and education as only Dickens can put it.

ari__s's review against another edition

1.0

I tried. I just couldn't like it. This might be a trend I'm forming toward Dickens. And I'm okay with that. I'll just watch the Mickey Mouse version of A Christmas Story if I really feel like I need some Dickens in my life.