A review by kecb12
The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

4.0

I wavered back and forth between 3 and 4 stars, but in the end I went with 4 because it’s Dickens and his characters are worth the extra star. This will not go down as my favorite Dickens book. It’s alright, but it seems to be missing the usual cohesiveness of a Dickens story. Oh, sure, everything comes together in the end, but I didn’t feel a strong sense of “THIS is what this book is about”. In fact, I’m not sure what message we are supposed to take from this book. The good characters are SO good and the bad characters are SO bad and the characters who seem to fall in the middle end up taking a side in the end. This was an overly-simplified story and set of characters for Dickens. But that being said, I still can respect the characters Dickens creates. Quilp is the worst character I’ve ever read. He’s awful. Dick Swiveller shows an interesting growth arc. But so many other characters are sort of flat and uninteresting, which is not typical Dickens. Overall, I enjoy Dickens’ writing style and humor, so I still enjoyed the book, but I wouldn’t reread this one.