Book Review
Jul. 17th, 2008 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariMartin Chuzzlewit
by Charles Dickens
This novel had lots of good qualities, although I found it lacked a bit of focus for Dickens. There were a lot of main characters and several different plot threads, such that long stretches of the book were only tangentially connected with the title characters (there are two people so named: a wealthy old man and the grandson named after him). However, the multitude of characters and plot threads does allow Dickens to engage in a wide-ranging and nuanced exploration of selfishness, selflessness, the journey from one to the other, and the consequences of each.
As always, Dickens' strength is in his characters. In particular, I found Pecksniff's combination of deep hypocrisy and a tendency to make moralizing speeches alternately humorous and horrifying. Tom Pinch's unyielding goodness was so well rendered as to be endearing rather than annoying. And both the elder and younger Martin Chuzzlewit were made entirely sympathetic in both their virtues and faults.
by Charles Dickens
This novel had lots of good qualities, although I found it lacked a bit of focus for Dickens. There were a lot of main characters and several different plot threads, such that long stretches of the book were only tangentially connected with the title characters (there are two people so named: a wealthy old man and the grandson named after him). However, the multitude of characters and plot threads does allow Dickens to engage in a wide-ranging and nuanced exploration of selfishness, selflessness, the journey from one to the other, and the consequences of each.
As always, Dickens' strength is in his characters. In particular, I found Pecksniff's combination of deep hypocrisy and a tendency to make moralizing speeches alternately humorous and horrifying. Tom Pinch's unyielding goodness was so well rendered as to be endearing rather than annoying. And both the elder and younger Martin Chuzzlewit were made entirely sympathetic in both their virtues and faults.
