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sumatra_squall 's review for:
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
Reading A Tale of Two Cities makes me regret not taking a course on Victorian literature in college. I'd imagined that Victorian novels would be long, dreary reads but my course of Dickens has been working out marvellously to date. The narrative in a Tale of Two Cities is gripping, particularly those parts of the novel that describe the misery of the peasantry and urban poor, and their ultimate revenge. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations were both page turners but of the two, I'd liked Oliver Twist better, finding Great Expectations a tad over the top at times (Ms Havisham, Pip's inexplicable obssession with Estella, the whole Magwitch affair). In a Tale of Two Cities, while there were still plot twists and drama aplenty, I felt that Dickens managed to keep a firm hand on things, not letting himself go overboard. Finally, I loved how the novel shifted easily between pure narrative and the symbolic (e.g. when describing the murder of the Marquis Evremonde).