My First Full-length Charles Dickens

Even to my own ears, it sounds ridiculous to say that I’ve never read a book by Charles Dickens before. 

I know many of his stories very well – Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol and,most of all, Great Expectations – but this has been through TV or film adaptations and simplified texts. I’ve been reading a simplified and abridged version of Great Expectations (Oxford Bookworms) with adult literacy students for years, so I thought it’d be good to try reading this Charles Dickens’ story, in the words of Charles Dickens himself.

The novel opens with a dramatic incident on the marshes , soon followed by a meeting with one of fiction’s most memorable characters, Miss Havisham. Dickens is the master of characterisation. The book is crammed with great characters: pugnacious Mrs Joe, eccentric Mr Wemmick, odious Uncle Pumblechook, all larger than life but believable within their own world. Reading the full, original novel allowed me to experience greater character development which added to my understanding of plot twists and turns.

However, as a 21st century reader I found Dickens’ writing quite cumbersome at times. Having read many older books than this, I was surprised by how archaic some of the language seemed. There was also a tendency to ramble now and again – I think (hope) that editing would be tighter if it were published today. 

For fabulous plots and immortal characters, Dickens deserves the recognition he still receives. But I do feel a new admiration for those who adapt and abridge his stories to make them more accessible to the people of today. 

This review was first published on Good Reads.