Oliver Twist
Dickens is forced on schoolkids and thereby puts us off by our very contrariness and obstinacy in liking anything that teachers put in front of us. Or maybe that was just me and my mates. He is a brilliant writer and you can just imagine folk eagerly anticipating the next installment as it was published. The characters are engaging and repulsive by turns and the story has pathos and comedy in shedloads. Although Dickens does rail against the injustices of the age, which strike a chord even now, I'm not sure that today he'd get away with such descriptions of Fagin. The characters are a little tabloides but he was a journalist and he's obviously making a point about why people find the place they're at, how they struggle in life and what they need to do to make ends meet. And of course the inevitable, for the stories purpose, consequences which are not wholly fair on our heroes or villians. The poor and needy are contrasted with those with wealth and status although the former are far more developed as characters and in the plot. Although the London described is mainly gone, at least not as obvious on the surface, the conditions described and lives lived are the same for a great many across the globe. A gripping read and as I read it in the priveleged position of holidaying in an idyllic spot in Mallorca about as far from Dickensian London as you can get, at least within some sort of civilisation, then it was a strange experience to look up from a passage about cold damp crowded London streets full of filth and the destitute to gaze across the fjord like bay and beach from our holiday villa.
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