literaturejuggle 's review for:

The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

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I promised myself that I would read at least 50 pages before giving up. I made it to 51, which covers the first six chapters. The first three are almost unreadable. They are narrated by a character who is intrigued by what he sees but refuses to ask any pertinent questions and is the kind of infuriating old timey character who can tell who is good and can be trusted and who is bad and will never be redeemed simply by glancing at their face. In these chapters, it is wall-to-wall waffle with almost no discernible plot. Then Dickens gets tired of this and decides to write the rest of the book in third person. I realise this change came about because the work was originally serialised, but couldn't he have rewritten it for when it was published in novel form? So the story greatly improves when it moves into third person; there's much less waffle and events and characters seem to wake up a little bit. However, we spend these three chapters in the company of Mr Quilp who is so ridiculously grotesque and evil that I really couldn't bear to read more about him. I hoped perhaps the book might end with Mrs Quilp murdering everyone. So, loath to continue with a 600-page story that started off as boring and then headed into unpleasant if I had no idea if my efforts would be rewarded, I took a quick peruse of Wikipedia. Turns out that the plot and characters seem to continue to suffer from 'Dickens changes his mind as he goes along serialisation' and damn, does it not have a satisfactory ending, so, um, pass.