#39 - A Tale of Two Cities

This is my second crack at Dickens, having read and not enjoyed Oliver Twist when I was younger. His was actually my first experience with 'serial writing', something that I've now had a lot more experience with through the list. With Tale of Two Cities, Dickens manages to hit both the good and the bad of serial writing. The format allows, even indulges you to riff on something without real purpose. In the case of Melville, that means pointless chapters on colours and pseudoscience and architecture. But in the best cases, like Tolstoy, key moments of the story can be given their due. Dickens does both, with some fluff and some excellent diatribes.

Some of his best extended passages were in the settings and characterization. The book was really cinematic - not beautiful necessarily, just specifically very logical to film. There have already been 7 movies produced based on the book, as well as all other manner of adaptation. In part this speaks to the thoroughness of Dickens' descriptions, but also to what he doesn't show. Many of the characters were two-dimensional and created to represent one trait or archetype. While there was some ambiguity on it in the early stages, by the end of the story there was a clear delineation of good and evil, with only a couple of exceptions (Jerry) to prove the rule. For a refreshing change, it wasn't only the women - though Lucie was the innocent angel on a pedestal, and Madame Defarge was a bloodthirsty monster, they also had the incorrigibly stuffy Mr Lorry, and Charles as too-noble-to-be-noble. The only two characters that showed any change showed it as a direct reaction to the extent of their characters - the Doctor's shoemaking and Carton's final decision show what happens when their archetypes get pushed to breaking.

Because of the richness of the visuals, as well as the predictability of the characters, the whole story had something like a sense of fate to it. I know that the point Dickens wanted to make about the French Revolution was one of chaos, but it didn't come across that way to me. When things happened, they may not have made sense, but they all had a certain sense of divine fate around them. Whether they were factually innocent or guilty, what must be, will be. Darnay's acquittal in the first trial seems just as predestined as his guilt in the second. That's what makes the ending so much more satisfying - it's really the first example of a character in the book taking charge and breaking the natural flow of history. Even the Defarges eventual rise was dependent on waiting for the time to be right - but Carton's actions were something truly special.

Based almost solely on the ending, I'm going to give Dickens a solid grade on this one.

8/10