A Tale of Two Cities in Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Mar 02, 2008 Inder rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: england, france, audiobooks, 1001-books, 19th-century, fiction, read-2010

My feelings about A Tale of Two Cities are so well summed-up by E.M. Forster, I have to cut and paste this quote here:

The case of Dickens is significant. Dickens' people are nearly all flat. ... Nearly every one can be summed up in a sentence, and yet there is this wonderful feeling of human depth. ... Part of the genius of Dickens is that he does use types and caricatures, people whom we recognize the instant they re-enter, and yet achieves effects that are not mechanical and a vision of humani

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May 30, 2008 Sara Kearns rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, required-for-all-if-i-were-queen, classics

recently read it again, and wow does this country need a big dose of charles dickens. can't it be a requirement of all the born-here-and-can-read-and-especially-if-they-vote-or-have-a-sense-of-entitlement in order to receive the benefits of citizenship? ...more

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Jun 04, 2011 Mary Stephanos rated it it was amazing

This is a brilliant book, but brilliant only in the last 75 or so pages, when Dickens throws himself into the plot with vigor. The first 3/4 of the book lumber along like so many tumbrills on death's path. Not to mention that his characters--in this novel at least--lack depth, excepting perhaps Sydney Carton and gloriously vengeful (but ultimately one-note) Therese Defarge, knitting a continuous stream of victims for La Guillotine. That the violence at the heart of the story begins with a single ...more

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