I believe I promised you guys a review of A Tale of Two Cities
The thing is, I finished reading this book quite a while ago, but I had no idea what to write – more like, how to write a review in a way that will do this book a justice and still keep the thing within a page or two.
A Tale of Two Cities was, in a word, a masterpiece.
The book depicts the sheer horror and the sadness in the Reign of Terror and the first French Revolution, by focusing on a single family, Doctor and Lucy Manette, and all the people whose lives were touched by them. The story alone may not have been the brightest star in the sky of this book, but what shone was the writing. The sheer artistry of the words! Dickens manipulates the reader to feel, to think, exactly what he wants them to. The artistic elements he put to use – the metaphors and the imagery – man, I ended up green in envy of a long-dead man. And the foreshadowing, too – you as the reader already know, the basics of the French Revolution, the Guillotine, and everything that happened. You probably even know which character was going to die at the end. But still you remain at the edge of the seat, eagerly waiting for the next event to unfold, the next thing to happen.
The characterization wasn’t exact the best thing in the book – I mean, it is typically like most classics of that period, but not particularly appealing to the modern reader. Lucy Manette is a “sit still look pretty” girl, and that annoyed me. Darnay is so damn brave that he oversteps the line and falls right into stupid territory; but really, you can’t fault the writer for that. They are who they are, and who they are is passive and self-sacrificing. I did hate them for it, but not Dickens for the way he wrote them. Miss Pross and Mr. Lorry are great, and as for Sydney Carton, well, I’m in love (and tears, too!)
One person I really admired was Madame Defarge. She was strong, so damn strong. Never mind that hatred fueled her strength; it just takes an entirely different caliber of flint to set the spark that burns an entire nation. I also like that between her and her husband, Madame Defarge was the one who wore the pants in that relationship – in a time when that was entirely frowned upon. She was a storm in the shape of a woman. Of course, she went too far in the end, and I don’t regret what happened to her; but when she lasted, she was a blaze.
A Tale of Two Cities is full of despair, and sadness, and futility. It is a book about a series of events that were brought on by too much oppression, too much desperation and too much neglect; and that triggered a set of events that were like a forest fire; that spread too far and burned too much. So yes – a lot of despair in the book, but the end – in the end, was a seed of hope germinating in the ashes.
I loved this book. I found it an incredible journey.
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
A Tale of Two Cities, by #CharlesDickens #review
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