I grew up with Pip, Miss Havisham, The Convict and Estella from Great Expectations. My mother taught it every year in her 9th grade English classes and I got to help grade papers. So I had an early exposure to Dickens and read the "usual suspects" before I was 12.

However, as we all know, life gets in the way, and I haven't read Dickens for years. A favorite author of mine mentioned in an interview that Our Mutual Friend was one of his three favorite books and I decided I would read it.

I had forgotten how much fun Dickens is to read!!!!! His critiques of society are biting and his humor both subtle and outrageous. For instance, the no-good character Riderhood has come to London on an errand:

"'Yes, and I come to London to look arter my private affairs. My private affairs is to get appointed to the Lock as reg'lar keeper at fust-hand, and to have the law of a Busted B'low-Bridge steamer which drownded of me. I ain't a-going to be drownded and not paid for it.'
"Bradley looked at him, as though he were claiming to be a Ghost.
"'The Steamer,' said Mr. Riderhood, obstinately, 'run me down and drownded of me. Interference on the part of other parties brought me round; but I never asked 'em to bring me round, nor yet the steamer never asked 'em to it. I mean to be paid for the life as the steamer took.'"

Or on the narrowness of the English mind:

"Mr. Podsnap's world was not a very large world, morally; no, nor even geographically: seeing that although his business was sustained upon commerce with other countries, he considered other countries, with that important reservation, a mistake, and of their manners and customs would conclusively observe, 'Not English!' when, PRESTO! with a flourish of the arm and a flush of the face, they were swept away."

Our Mutual Friend concerns a young man returning to England after the death of his father to inherit his father's wealth. However, there is a stipulation in the will, that the son must marry the woman chosen for him by his father in order to inherit. John, the young man, appears to have been drowned in the London harbor and the inheritance goes to the two faithful servants his father had, who invite the chosen young lady to live with them in compensation for losing her chance at wealth as well as her fiance.

The story opens with a boatman and his daughter rowing on the Thames, searching for something. At first we don't know what; then we discover the man makes his living fishing dead bodies out of the river. The body he dredges up appears to be the body of John Hamon, the young inheritor.

However, John is still alive and takes a position as secretary with the two, now wealthy, servants and observes his potential bride's character and actions.

As in all Dickens novels, there are more side stories than can be mentioned here. However, girl becomes a truly better person; John gets girl; the whole world is happy.

There is a character called Jenny Wren who is a dolls' dressmaker with a bad back and "queer" legs, described as a "child - a dwarf - a girl- a something" who is one of the best of the minor characters.
But, as is always true in Dickens, all the minor characters have strengths of their own.

If this book has not been one of the Dickens books that you've read, please add it to your list and read it soon. Its rewards are multiple.