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tlsouthard 's review for:
The Pickwick Papers
by Charles Dickens
Oh, my gosh. I am such a Dickens fangirl. This started out a little slowly for me and I thought, "Well, this certainly won't hold a candle to Bleak House" (which I read prior to this). And in a way, I was right. It really doesn't. But that doesn't keep it from being so, so, so good. That someone had this much creativity bottled up inside a 24 year old body is just mind-boggling.
This is not so much a connected story as a series of stories, wild tales, ghost stories, poems, and all manner of writings, all jammed into one book. It is as if Dickens is trying out lots of different styles an genres - "Do I want to write a mystery? Do I want to take a stand against the legal system? Do I want infuriating characters? Do I want funny vignettes?" And the answer to all of these questions was "Yes. Yes I do. Why choose?" So he didn't.
You see the beginnings of several other stories - including A Christmas Carol and the legal shenanigans of Bleak House's Jarndyce and Jarndyce. You see his absolute delight in creating characters that may sound like cardboard figures when you describe them, but somehow end up morphing into *people*. What started out as a kind of "duty read" ended up being an altogether enjoyable experience.
And I closed the book after 804 pages sorry that there was no more. Dickens and Trollope both are like that for me. However much there is, it isn't enough.
BTW: The Audible version of this book, narrated by David Timson, is stellar and comes with my highest recommendation. If I could buy you a copy, I would.
This is not so much a connected story as a series of stories, wild tales, ghost stories, poems, and all manner of writings, all jammed into one book. It is as if Dickens is trying out lots of different styles an genres - "Do I want to write a mystery? Do I want to take a stand against the legal system? Do I want infuriating characters? Do I want funny vignettes?" And the answer to all of these questions was "Yes. Yes I do. Why choose?" So he didn't.
You see the beginnings of several other stories - including A Christmas Carol and the legal shenanigans of Bleak House's Jarndyce and Jarndyce. You see his absolute delight in creating characters that may sound like cardboard figures when you describe them, but somehow end up morphing into *people*. What started out as a kind of "duty read" ended up being an altogether enjoyable experience.
And I closed the book after 804 pages sorry that there was no more. Dickens and Trollope both are like that for me. However much there is, it isn't enough.
BTW: The Audible version of this book, narrated by David Timson, is stellar and comes with my highest recommendation. If I could buy you a copy, I would.