A review by lakmus
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

4.0

I humbly propose we supplement the endless adaptations of Austen with some freshly televised Dickens – this would make a /dope/ period drama. With emphasis on drama, because boy does it have some good plot-twists.

I decided I'm going to treat the main leads (Lucie and Charles) as stand-ins for abstract ideal humans, rather than "duhovnye ovcy", pardon my Russian, because that is the only explanation I have for this peculiar phenomenon. I highly doubt, given the wide array of otherwise very real and colourful and delightfully flawed humans, that Dickens is mysteriously unable to write an interesting noblewoman (or nobleman, for that matter, because Charles Darnay is not much better tbh), and chose this bland cutout of A Lady and A Gentleman from some 19th century magazine on purpose.

I'm sure this has some social/historical/political context that I cannot pick up on; similarly for other various literary devices, allusions, etc, but I don't particularly care. It's Dickens and so is first of all entertaining, even if a little hard to read because of the more flexible grammar than is used now and the random obscure words.