Onze wederzijdse vriend (1865)

Vastly disappointing. I have read most of Dickens' novels and found all of them engrossing from first to last (five stars). Until this. Our Mutual Friend is much verbosity about mostly vapid characters, for the first 40% of the novel, whereupon I gave up. ( )

This won't overtake Bleak House or Great Expectations as my all-time favourite Dickens novels but still loved it. It's packed with more marvellous characters and a wonderful plot that builds slowly to a breathless climax that you don't want to leave until you are sure that the unpleasant characters have received their just desserts (which they do) and the good (and indeed the two characters who become greatly improved) receive their reward (which they do). I adored the last chapter which was a wonderful dig at the snobs and heartless social climbers that Dickens clearly came across on a frequent basis. In homage to that chapter I would like to shake Dickens metaphorically by the hand and tell him a job well done. ( )

Usually it takes a bit to get into a Dickens novel but once I'm in I enjoy them. That was not the case here. I kept reading, but never really got interested in the characters or the various plots. A miss for me, alas. ( )

H1.1.5

Meera Syal’s narration of this work, complete with a unique voice for each character, is the best performance I’ve heard on Audible and what a story!

As Dickens writes in an afterword, there are two major plot twists in this novel (John Rockville is the heir John Hanford and the Boffins were in on the secret all along), one of which is deliberately telegraphed to the reader very early on and the other completely disguised until the very end of the novel. The final twist is worthy of the Dallas reunion movie where it turns out that J.R. merely shot the mirror in the original series finale inspired by A Christmas Carol.

And along the way, we see Dickens at his most masterful in creating unforgettable characters and dialogue, skewering society, advocating for the poor and writing some of the finest landscape/riverscape descriptions I have ever had the pleasure to read. This is one of those books the reader savors. I found myself worrying that some particularly wonderful passages were not bound to be bound to my memory.

If pressed for what I liked best, I would have to say the characters and the dialogue: Ms. Jenny Wren, the dressmaker of children’s dolls, the Veneerings, Podsnaps and Miss Tiffen, dinner hosts and guests from hell, Betty Hidgins, a poor woman destined to die on the road, Mrs.Wilfer, who wants nothing more than to rise above her station, Mr. Venus the taxidermist and the unparalleled band of villains—Bradley Headstone, the stalking, murderous schoolmaster, the Lammles, the fortune hunters mutually deceived into marriage, Rodger Ridinghood a river rogue, and Fascinating Fledgby, the indolent “gentleman” looking for a scam and hiding his money-lending business behind the kindly Jew, Mr. Riah, and Charley Hexam, a poor boy with brains and ambition.

These characters are all much more interesting with richer lives, stories, dialogue, than the main characters driving the plot. With Dickens, the plot is just the structure around which the best parts of the novel are strung.

This could be the best Dickens I’ve ever read although Great Expectations will always hold a special place for me. I see that it often ranks among Dickens’ most beloved works, the other one that is frequently mentioned being Bleak House. It’s been at least thirty years since I last visited Bleak House and this experience tells me it’s time for a revisit. ( )