In between the too-easy critical division of early, picaresque, comic Dickens and later, more somber, better-planned novels dwells "David Copperfield" smack in the middle, eighth of 15. Indeed, in its mid-period birth, "David Copperfield," has all of Dickens' trademarks but still feels like something other: a more "realistic" (comparatively), unforced, deeply felt tale. The most autobiographical of Dickens' novels was famously his favorite. You can't always trust an author's evaluation of his own work, but you can here. I'd place "Copperfield" second of the 13 Dickens novels I've read, behind only "Bleak House."

Like another top-flight Dickens, "Great Expectations," "Copperfield" has a first-person narrator. David takes us from his own birth through his troubled early days living with an unfeeling stepfather and his grim sister after the death of his mother, through his time as a successful novelist. David eventually runs away from the Murdstones to live with his great aunt, Betsey Trotwood. Eccentric and seemingly stern but with a heart of gold, Betsey is the second of David's mother figures, following his beloved nurse, Peggotty. Betsey seems plagued by young men riding donkeys on (or near) her property, whose appearance always gives her a conniption. So she's perpetually on the lookout for the beasts ("Janet! Donkies!"). Love that. Events and people come in twos all the way through "David Copperfield": two post-mother "mothers," two marriages, two fallen women, two second families, two tragic deaths.

The novel famously begins, "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." David is, of course, the center of the novel, it definitely not being one of the Dickens novels in which the identity of the main character is up for debate. Dickens for the most part resists, however, making of David a paragon of virtue, a complaint often lodged against "Bleak House"'s Esther Summerson. It's great fun when David gets staggering drunk. And his judgment of people isn't always perfect (see Steerforth, below). David also tends to fall into a lovesick swoon often; a part of him, just at the limits of his vision, realizes his wife is an empty, beautiful, self-absorbed but lovable vessel. It's interesting how Dickens walks this tightrope of David sort of recognizing what she is and loving her anyway.

"David Copperfield" examines, among other things, writing, memory, marriage and identity. David is one of the characters called multiple names: Trotwood, Daisy, Doady — seemingly everything but David Copperfield.

Some of Dickens' most interesting characters populate the book. There's verbose, perpetually penniless Mr. Micawber, always trying to stay out of prison; young Uriah Heep, whose incessant professing to be 'umble masks dark designs (he's one of Dickens' best creations); Steerforth, idolized by Copperfield but with feet of clay; David's child-wife Dora, a beautiful but frivolous and simple woman who pouts and fawns over her ubiquitous dog, Jip. There also are brief, funny scenes with a dwarf woman, perhaps a female answer to the villainous dwarf Quilp in "The Old Curiosity Shop."

If divided roughly into quarters, "Copperfield" has a lagging second section in which not a great deal happens (the first part, David's early years, is critic-proof), but those who stick with it will be rewarded. "Copperfield" may lack a central plot, but its branches are verdant and sprawling; it feels more like a life.