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nwhyte 's review for:
Our Mutual Friend
by Charles Dickens
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3450418.html
None of the characters and little of the writing particularly grabbed me. The core plot is a chap who fakes his own death and then deceives his wife about who he really is, partly to test her character, which I find utterly repulsive behaviour, presented by Dickens as moral courage and heroism. (She passes the test, of course; Dickens is reticent about what would have happened if she had not.) The lower-class couple who had accidentally become rich joyfully surrender their undeserved fortune to our hero, which again I found rather grating. There are some meandering side plots on the banks of the Thames, upstream and in London, but they seemed to me both moralising and far-fetched.
None of the characters and little of the writing particularly grabbed me. The core plot is a chap who fakes his own death and then deceives his wife about who he really is, partly to test her character, which I find utterly repulsive behaviour, presented by Dickens as moral courage and heroism. (She passes the test, of course; Dickens is reticent about what would have happened if she had not.) The lower-class couple who had accidentally become rich joyfully surrender their undeserved fortune to our hero, which again I found rather grating. There are some meandering side plots on the banks of the Thames, upstream and in London, but they seemed to me both moralising and far-fetched.