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Title: Adventures of Oliver Twist (Oxford Illustrated Dickens) by Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank, George Cruickshank ISBN: 0-19-254505-1 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: November, 1987 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.92 (87 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Page-Turner
Comment: A novel of this size can be daunting for the reader. "If I start this book, I'm going to have to spend the next month finishing it". That's what I thought anyway. But in Oliver Twist I sailed through the pages. It's rare that a classic, and I have read many of them, becomes a page-turner but this one did. Maybe I was lucky in not having seen the film versions prior to the reading of the book because I desperately wanted to find out what happened to Oliver and the multitude of other brilliantly written characters who inhabit the pages of Dickens' classic.
The plot is simple. A boy escapes his orphan home to live in London with a group of thieves and pickpockets. He's saved from this depraved life by a kindly, lonely old gentleman. But the villains, Bill Sykes and especially Fagin, fear that the boy may rat them out and so they kidnap him back. Can Oliver make it back to the life he deserves?
Oliver's story is not a very originally one, but it is enlivened by some of the greatest characters I've ever seen written. My personal favourites and there are many, are Noah Claypole who becomes a principle player and a very funny one at that, near the book's conclusion; and Mr. Brownlow, who's catchphrase "I'll eat my own head" had me bursting into laughter.
The book is diminished by its excessive sentimentality at the conclusion. Its female characters, apart from the courageous Nancy, are written in a golden light so as to become fantasies rather than the gloriously dirty reality of their male counterparts. A sub-plot between Mary and her boyfriend is ridiculously excessive.
Against these weaknesses, the book is a triumph of character. Often memorably played on screen, the two villains have become more famous than the title character, who is slightly simpering. Fagin is deliciously smarmy and Sykes is evil incarnate. They get their comuppance in justifiably brutal fashion. Dickens like most of us was a sucker for a happy ending.
Rating: 5
Summary: Thieves, Murderers and all of their Ilk
Comment: This book surprised me, not by the quality of its writing, which one can expect from Charles Dickens, but by the violent, lusty primal quality of the story. This is no dry musty tome, but a vital novel that arouses both passion and intellect. A literal page turner, I found myself having more than one sleepless night when I just couldn't put it down.
Inside are some of the major characters in the realm of fiction; Fagin and his gang of child thieves, including the Artful Dodger. Nancy, the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold. Master Charles Bates (was this a pun even then?) Bad Bill Sikes, who shows the darker edge to all of this dangerous fun, and the innocent, pure Oliver Twist, who is the very definition of nature over nurture.
A great book, and one that I am glad to have finally read.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Language is Easier to Understand
Comment: The meandering plots of most Dickens novels leave me cold most of the time, but I found this book easier to understand and enjoy. I'm glad I finally pulled the book off the shelf and read it.
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Title: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Frederick Busch ISBN: 0451526562 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: August, 1997 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: David Copperfield (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Jeremy Tambling ISBN: 0140434941 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Leo Damrosch ISBN: 0451527321 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
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Title: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, John Seelye ISBN: 0140390839 Publisher: Puffin Pub. Date: October, 1987 List Price(USD): $7.00 |
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Title: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas ISBN: 0140367470 Publisher: Puffin Pub. Date: November, 1995 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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