A review by blairmahoney
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

3.0

For all of its well-known characters like the insipid Oliver, the Artful Dodger and the epitome of anti-semitic characterisation, Fagin, this is not a very good novel. The characters amount to much more than the novel that generated them. I read this aloud to my son over a period of months and it was quite a relief to finish it. There are the wonderful descriptive passages that Dickens is famed for and my son will long remember Mr Grimwig's repeated vow to "eat his head" if he is wrong about something and the menace of Bill Sikes, but the memorable bits are small glimmers in a morass of mediocrity.