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A review by ladydewinter
Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens
3.0
“Barnaby Rudge” is Charles Dickens’ other historical novel, set during the Gordon Riots in 1780, an event I literally knew nothing about before reading this book. It was a surprisingly quick read - certainly helped by the fact that it had a lot more illustrations than usual and me probably having got used to his writing.
What I think is interesting is that in his earlier writing he swung far more to one side of the pendulum - funny or serious- and in his later work was better at balancing the two. (Although “A Tale of Two Cities”, his better-known historical novel, isn’t particularly funny either.) There is satire here, but it’s more scattered and not as funny as I know his writing can be.
While there were characters I liked here as well, overall they remained much flatter than in his later books (something that makes me happy I chose such a random order to read them in, because it makes those contrasts more apparent). Surprisingly enough, there is no tear-jerker death in here, either. And as a modern reader, the “let’s tie everything up nearly” felt somewhat quaint. (Never mind the events of the second-to-last chapter, which felt too convenient.)
What I found chilling, and what I think makes it worth reading today, however, is the way he analyzes the build-up to the riots. Replace “Papists” with “Jews” or “Muslims”, and you realize how depressingly timeless something like this is. Dickens shows how prejudice is used by people who often don’t really care one way or other but find it convenient to direct a certain group’s attention one way or other. And the way he describes the mob marching through the town was disturbing and more than a little disconcerting.
Isn’t it great how mankind never learns?
Anyway. Three stars feel unnecessarily harsh somehow, but despite its merits it still falls in the bottom half of Dickens’ works for me, so there you go. That’s what you get for writing plenty of great novels, I guess.
What I think is interesting is that in his earlier writing he swung far more to one side of the pendulum - funny or serious- and in his later work was better at balancing the two. (Although “A Tale of Two Cities”, his better-known historical novel, isn’t particularly funny either.) There is satire here, but it’s more scattered and not as funny as I know his writing can be.
While there were characters I liked here as well, overall they remained much flatter than in his later books (something that makes me happy I chose such a random order to read them in, because it makes those contrasts more apparent). Surprisingly enough, there is no tear-jerker death in here, either. And as a modern reader, the “let’s tie everything up nearly” felt somewhat quaint. (Never mind the events of the second-to-last chapter, which felt too convenient.)
What I found chilling, and what I think makes it worth reading today, however, is the way he analyzes the build-up to the riots. Replace “Papists” with “Jews” or “Muslims”, and you realize how depressingly timeless something like this is. Dickens shows how prejudice is used by people who often don’t really care one way or other but find it convenient to direct a certain group’s attention one way or other. And the way he describes the mob marching through the town was disturbing and more than a little disconcerting.
Isn’t it great how mankind never learns?
Anyway. Three stars feel unnecessarily harsh somehow, but despite its merits it still falls in the bottom half of Dickens’ works for me, so there you go. That’s what you get for writing plenty of great novels, I guess.