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Title: Our Mutual Friend (Part 1) by Charles Dickens, Robert Whitfield ISBN: 0-7861-1665-X Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks Pub. Date: December, 1999 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $95.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.34 (32 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Worth every effort to read.
Comment: I think that it may be hard for the modern reader to find the time to read _Our Mutual Friend_. It's length makes it undeniably difficult to fit easily into the daily allotment of reading time. Weighing in at over 900 pages, it was originally published as a twenty-part monthly serial. There are also a number of situations and details that while very familiar to the Victorians, will be almost wholly incomprehensible to the reader of today (for instance the role of dust and dustmen and the mounds in the yard of the old house).
It's also clearly not Dickens' sunniest work. At the time of its release already, people spoke nostalgically about the more gentle nature of _David Copperfield_ or _Oliver Twist_ . While the farce that constitutes such an important element in Dickens' works is present, it's tainted with a note of bitterness that conveys a feeling of pervasive sadness throughout this great novel.
Dickens was working on this book when he was caught in the Staplehurst rail disaster and narrowly escaped death when his car was the only one of the first-class cars not to plunge from a bridge into a river bed. He was one of the people who climbed down the side to do what he could for the dead and dying. Dickens himself mentions the accident in his afterword, and at the risk of reading too much into the incident, it's hard not to read this book from the perspective of an aging man who narrowly avoids death himself. The nature of death, and the idea of escaping it by a hand's length, is one of the themes that comes back over and over again in _Our Mutual Friend_
The plot hinges around a disputed inheritance and mistaken identity, with a meditation about love as societal coin. The characterizations and situations in this novel are among his best-- particularly worth mentioning are Rogue Riderhood and his resurrection, the insane love of Bradley Headstone, the crippled doll-maker Jenny Wren, and the loyal Mr. Sloppy.
I'm not sure that I can call this my favorite Dickens, _Little Dorrit_ still has a strong claim on that position, but it's certainly one of the strongest reading experiences that I've had in a while.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Patchwork of Plot Lines
Comment: One character in Dicken's novel, Our Mutual Friend, the crippled Jenny Wren pieces together scraps of cloth and thread out of London's refuse to create beautiful doll gowns for aristocratic children. Dickens here does the same. In the beginning several fragmented plots give a hodgepodge sampling of many social and moral ranks of London society. Dickens then proceeds to artfully interweave all the threads to create a coherent story. I could not award five stars because what Dickens fails to do in all of his literary meanderings is to devote enough time to any one character or group of characters to create deep sympathy or really anything more than a passing interest. Earlier works like Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and Nicholas Nickleby all had a definite protagonist. While Dickens might step away from him for any length of time, we are attracted to the story because we are made to feel something for the character and to wish to see how events will unfold in his life. I just didn't feel that in Our Mutual Friend.
Dickens does succeed with his customary wit. I was glad that the underdogs won in the end, even those that seemed to play only a small role in the novel's events. But the ending was too formulaic for my post-modern tastes (the villians die, the heros marry), but I do give it four stars, for though this may be my least favorite Dicken's novel thus far (I've read 4 others), it is leaps and bounds better than many of the world's novels.
Rating: 2
Summary: An Unhelpful Introduction
Comment: The two star rating is aimed at the introductory material chosen by the editors of the Modern Library Classics Edition, not at all at Dickens' novel.
An introduction should facilitate the reader's comprehension of the work. Particularly, one expects Modern Library editions to be demotic, helping keep classics alive for readers who are not up to speed on high toned literary criticism.
The essay by Richard Gaughan which was chosen to "introduce" Dickens' most complex and difficult novel requires more effort than the work itself. Not a good situation.
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Title: Little Dorrit (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Stephen Wall, Helen Small ISBN: 0140434925 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Old Curiosity Shop (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Charles Dicken, Norman Page, George Cattermole ISBN: 0140437428 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 03 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Patricia Ingham ISBN: 0140436146 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens, Andrew Sanders ISBN: 0140435468 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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Title: Nicholas Nickleby (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Mark Ford, Hablot K. Browne ISBN: 0140435123 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1999 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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