You say you want a revolution...

Week 29: A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Recommended by: Chris Spencer

As many of my readers probably know, me and pre-20th century literature have a mixed record. Some of the classics, the canon, the whatever you want to call them, I've found to be excellent, others I've struggled to get to grips with or have left me disappointed or just plain indifferent. So how does that differ to any other book or genre you might be wondering? I guess because they're not always things I would choose for myself. I do read them often enough, partially I suspect out of a 'I should have read this' mentality, and partly in the hope that they will actually turn out to be amazing, but unlike some of my friends, they are a long way from my default option.

Or maybe that's just not true any more, now I think about it. There are lots of classics that I do enjoy, probably outweighing those I dislike (hey, I'm easy to please), but I also think that part of the key is that I did choose to pick them up myself and at the right time to appreciate them. I only read Pride and Prejudice for the first time a couple of years ago (yeah, feel free to judge me) – and I bloody loved it. However, I'm well aware that fifteen-year-old me would not have done, would not have appreciated that it's a social satire and I can't think of anything more likely to put children and teenagers off reading than forcing 'worthy' books on them at school that they have to slog through and gain little from (I could also rant about politicians and stupid ideas quite happily).

Anyway, having largely avoided anything dreadful being foisted on me at school, I have enjoyed most of the Dickens I've read, though some books have been harder going than others. A Tale of Two Cities falls into the tougher camp. I didn't enjoy it as much as David Copperfield, Oliver Twist or Bleak House, likening it most to Hard Times. Poverty and injustice are common themes throughout all of Dickens' work but I think it's the lack of humour that makes me pair it with the last of those novels.

With the possible exception of Jerry Cruncher, there are none of the caricatures and grotesques you may expect, and a grave-digger and wife-beater is not ideally placed to provide light relief. Inadvertently I couldn't picture M. Defarge as a wine shop owner, contemporary politics leading me to peg him as a guffawing twat in a purple tie clutching a pint, a slightly odd counterpart to his wife's Lady Macbeth. The large cast you would also probably expect from Mr D is present though, and I liked this and the scale of the story, both macro events and intertwining micro relationships that tied the characters together.

However, it wasn't really until the third book and the arrival in Paris that I really felt things properly kicked into gear. The lesson: if you're going to use the French Revolution as a backdrop, make the most of it (see also Les Misérables; later time period but only really got going once in Paris). The first part set things up nicely in a concise way, but the second part was more of a struggle than I was expecting. However, the third and final part had a cracking pace to it, more suspense and intrigue and finally succeeded in delivering at least some of the book that was promised.