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Title: Dombey and Son (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Andrew Sanders ISBN: 0-14-043546-8 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.26 (19 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Complex, richly drawn, psychologically accurate characters
Comment: A previously posted review asks: "How can readers accept that a woman's happiness can be achieved either through living to make men happy OR through living according to one's conscience? Surely one of these characters deserves the author's condemnation yet neither clearly receives it." It is sad when a reader is so intent on pigeonholing complex, richly drawn characters into narrow politically correct categories that he or she misses out on joys of a wonderful novel like this. Florence is denied her father's love, blames herself, and strives harder for it. This is a psychologically accurate portrait of what such a child would do, not an example of "living to make men happy" that Dickens should have condemned or praised. Likewise as to Edith's "living according to her conscience," although in fact she fails to live according to her conscience, and hates herself for it. And another previously posted review says that "the ending is wonderful, and Dickens ties up the numerous subplots with the most delightful precision." I found the final 100 pages the only bad part of the book, as Dickens artificially ties up matters that he had no need to tie up; he should have ended the book sooner. But this is my favorite Dickens novel so far.
Rating: 4
Summary: Ponderous portrait of pride
Comment: If you love Dickens, you'll like this book. If you're not committed to the work and style of Boz, you may have a hard time getting through it. It gets off to a very slow start; it wears its didactic aims more prominently on its sleeve than most of Dickens' novels do (the preceding novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, having been a study of the perils of greed, this one is likewise a study on self-destroying pride.) Its heroine is so self-sacrificing, uncomplaining, sweet and forgiving that a modern reader is likely to feel the impulse to throttle her more than once. I found it the least satisfying of the dozen Dickens novels I've read, and have rounded its three and a half stars up rather than down, in honor of all the other good stuff he's produced.
All that being said, the book contains plenty of rewards for the persevering. Dombie's daughter, the over-gentle Florence, is more than made up for by a string of sharply drawn women who are nobody's wallflowers: the peppery Susan Nipper, the fearsome landlady Mac Stinger, and the magnificent second Mrs. Dombey, whose inflexible, bent pride puts steel to her husband's flint as the story gains headway halfway through. The plotting is intricate and tight, the peeks into Victorian hypocrisies (never far removed from our own) are trenchant, and we are treated to what is possibly the most riveting death scene in the whole oeuvre, which Dickens chose to present from the decedent's point of view in a stream of consciousness passage as remarkable for its technical daring as its sentimentality.
Throw in the superbly menacing, dentally impeccable villain, Mr Carker, and a rogue's gallery of lesser despicables from the streetwise dunce Chicken, to the blustering toady Joe Bagstock, to the second Mrs. Dombey's outrageous tin magnolia of a mother, and it's a book you'd be happy to stumble across in the cabin some snowbound weekend.
The Oxford World Classics edition has an extremely useful set of notes, which includes in full Dickens' initial outline of the work.
Rating: 5
Summary: Best Dickens Ever
Comment: This is one of the best Dickens novels I have ever read. The character of Florence is so beautifully developed, and while I was reading, I got the sense that Dickens himself was in love with Florence. There's also that sense of mystery, in the dealings of Mrs. Brown and Alice, and their hatred of Mr. Carker. This book is full of surprises, and I was kept riveted to every single page. This is definitely a book that I would recommend to anyone, and one that I will be reading again and again.
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Title: Little Dorrit (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Stephen Wall, Helen Small ISBN: 0140434925 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Patricia Ingham ISBN: 0140436146 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Our Mutual Friend (PENGUIN CLASSICS) by Charles Dickens, Adrian Poole ISBN: 0140434976 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1998 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Mystery of Edwin Drood (New Oxford Illustrated Dickens) by Charles Dickens ISBN: 0192545167 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1987 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Nicholas Nickleby (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Mark Ford, Hablot Knight Browne ISBN: 0140435123 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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