The ABC's of Literature: Dickens

Most people encountered Charles Dickens in high school, whether it was through “A Tale of Two Cities," “Oliver Twist” or “Great Expectations," and for many people, it was hate at first sight. According to many of the people in my high school English class, Dickens was long-winded and boring and for a while, I thought so too. But then I had a few too many close encounters with plot-free contemporary novels, reread Great Expectations, and started to realize exactly why Dickens was the most popular writer of his time.

Things are always happening in Dickens' novels. Shady street gangs exploit orphans, byzantine legal cases claim the sanity of their lawyers, mysterious women insist on wearing their wedding dresses dozens of years after being abandoned on their wedding day and the wheels of the plot never stop turning. No one just wanders out to get a coffee while pondering just how very difficult it is to be a young male writer in Brooklyn — they'd stumble upon a murder while they did it. Moreover, the plot twists in a Dickens novel are genuinely exciting and surprising, perhaps because the books were originally published in serial form and the end of each section had to keep the readers eagerly awaiting the next installment. Best of all, these plots center around engaging and human characters whose fates you can't help being invested in. People once thronged the docks of New York City to find out whether or not Little Nell of “The Old Curiosity Shop” survived, and it's easy to see why.

Admittedly, Dickens isn't always an easy read and certainly never a quick one. His books require time, concentration and perhaps a strong cup of tea and some snacks to read them with. He appears to have been quite fond of lengthy descriptions of food, settings and characters' physical appearances and sometimes the prose can get bogged down in those descriptions. The best choice for rediscovering Dickens is a book where the plot and characters are compelling enough to overrule the occasional lengthy description — one of his best-known classics like “Oliver Twist” or “Great Expectations.” They're classics for a reason after all, and their colorful casts of characters and dramatic storylines are the perfect fodder for a long snowy afternoon. They're both coming-of-age stories of a sort but “Great Expectations” is the deeper of the two, perfect for a reader hoping to reflect on the darker side of ambition and the struggles of growing up. “David Copperfield,” although massive, is also capable of being massively entertaining. Then, if you enjoy some of the classic Dickens stories, you can move on to more esoteric Dickens efforts like “Bleak House,” the story of the never-ending legal case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce and the unfinished “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” where the reader gets to decide the identity of the murderer.  Either way, there's enough Dickens, not just in terms of pages but in terms of depth, for an entire vacation if not for an entire lifetime of reading.