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soniabookish 's review for:
Los papeles póstumos del Club Pickwick
by Charles Dickens
“Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.”
— 3 ★
It took me two whole months to finish The Pickwick Papers . I even almost forgot how to write a review because I did not read anything else in between. I think I chose a wrong time to read it, I had a lot to study for finals and finish some assignments for uni. My stress levels were never so high. So, obviously, a major reading slump was coming up.
The thing is, it isn’t an easy book to be read. I say that in the sense that it wasn’t meant to be read as a novel. It was originally serialized, thought to be read periodically throughout time.
However, despite not having a strong plot, it was tremendously entertaining. Last week, I finally got over my reading slump and finished the last 700 pages without realizing it. This was Dickens first novel, but you can already see what an amazing writer he would become in later years. He subtlety introduces themes such as poverty, law and politics, which he develops more in his following works.
One of the things I really loved about it was Dickens ability to create memorable characters and his humor, that relies mostly on stereotypes. Sam Weller and Mr. Pickwick were definitely my favourites. Let me share this hilarious quote from the famous hat scene:
“There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.”
Unfortunately, women were reduced to weak-minded, “hysterical” characters, extremely prone to fainting. They were there only as mere objects of romantic conquest, which is really discouraging. However, I know Dickens remedies this in his later works, so I’ll just attribute it to his youth (I believe he wrote this book in his twenties).
All in all, I found this book to be a cozy read. Surprisingly, it saddened me quite a lot when I finished the last chapter, the ending was really sweet.
cawpile rating: 6.93