A Tale of Two Cities

6/10

It had the best of Dicken’s characters… no wait. It didn’t. I enjoyed this book… but I didn’t love it. Incredible writing, but not terribly engaging.

Despite feeling conflicted about this book, I can’t mirror the done-to-death opening that remains powerful, notwithstanding its ubiquity in popular culture and humour. In many ways, this book is an incredible piece of literature, written to a very high standard with rich imagery, atmosphere, and descriptions, including spilled wine foreshadowing spilled blood and, generally, language that moves along at a very pleasant rhythm. The novel opens in a mysterious way that obscures as much as possible from the reader, however, as it progresses and we spend more time with its main characters, it is unable to shake this air of mystery, and I still didn’t feel that I knew them or connected with them. As to relating to a character, I guess it would have to be Mr. Jarvis Lorry. Afterall, he is strictly business. Some of the points in the book are hit a little too hard. We get it. The French elite are awful and living it up while the poor are, quite literally, crushed beneath their wheels. While the flow of the language is above criticism, the pace of the plot and story are not, and the novel only becomes tense, exciting, and emotional as it approaches its conclusion. With regard to certain plot elements, too, I was questioning their inclusion. The compulsive shoemaking was ridiculous, the ‘cat fight’ between Miss Pross and Madame Defarge was too much, and is Jerry Cruncher supposed to be sympathetic after beating his wife and robbing graves? Finally, when it came to Carton’s ‘tear jerking’ self-sacrifice, I felt nothing.