From the Bookshelf of Catching up on Classics (and lots more!)…

Oliver Twist

Charles Dickens

Start date: June 1, 2024

Finish date: June 30, 2024

Discussion leader: Trisha

Why we're reading this: Old School Classic Group Read June 2024
Old School Classic Group Read, March 2011
[close] Old School Classic Group Read June 2024
Old School Classic Group Read, March 2011

Find A Copy At

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Feb 15, 2013 Renate rated it liked it

Shelves: classics, fiction, bookclub

Oliver Twist reads exactly like what it is:- A serialized soap opera. Such melodrama!
The thing is:- In the 1830s, when this novel was first published as monthly installments in a magazine, there was no television, for the simple reason that it had not been invented yet, and so people who would have liked to watch Eastenders could read about the trials and tribulations of sweet, innocent, dear little Oliver instead. (Did you see what I just did Mr. Dickens? I tried my hand at writing a long sente Oliver Twist reads exactly like what it is:- A serialized soap opera. Such melodrama!
The thing is:- In the 1830s, when this novel was first published as monthly installments in a magazine, there was no television, for the simple reason that it had not been invented yet, and so people who would have liked to watch Eastenders could read about the trials and tribulations of sweet, innocent, dear little Oliver instead. (Did you see what I just did Mr. Dickens? I tried my hand at writing a long sentence just like you!)
This, my first attempt at reading Dickens, was surprisingly entertaining and readable. But it is quite clear that this is a commercial piece of fiction in which the author was contractually obliged to produce a piece of a certain length at a certain date. It is easy to spot the bits where Dickens was just writing fillers to fill a quota or where he was stuck or bored with Oliver's story and just wrote whatever came into is head, presumably just to get to the printers on time.
However, I don't want to be too hard on Dickens. This was only his second work, written in his early twenties. Like I said, I did enjoy this book more than I expected. Dickens certainly writes beautiful prose and there are lots of very humorous bits, mostly of the sarcastic kind. My favourite chapter is Noah's "job interview" with Fagin and also the famous explanation on why "number one is the magic number".
I can recommend listening to this book on audio. My audio book was narrated by Nadia May who did a very entertaining job with different accents and voices for the various characters. I alternated between reading this excellent Penguin Classics edition on the train, bus and in bed, with listening to the audio whilst pottering around the house. The book required three bookmarks at once because I kept referring to the the footnotes and word list at the back. It certainly helped to understand the context of this novel.
So, all in all a pleasant surprise to find Dickens not hard to read at all. Some day I might try another of his books.
...more

1 like · Like · see review