Rating: 
Summary: A Patchwork of Plot Lines
Review: One character in Dicken's novel, Our Mutual Friend, the crippled Jenny Wren pieces together scraps of cloth and thread out of London's refuse to create beautiful doll gowns for aristocratic children. Dickens here does the same. In the beginning several fragmented plots give a hodgepodge sampling of many social and moral ranks of London society. Dickens then proceeds to artfully interweave all the threads to create a coherent story. I could not award five stars because what Dickens fails to do in all of his literary meanderings is to devote enough time to any one character or group of characters to create deep sympathy or really anything more than a passing interest. Earlier works like Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and Nicholas Nickleby all had a definite protagonist. While Dickens might step away from him for any length of time, we are attracted to the story because we are made to feel something for the character and to wish to see how events will unfold in his life. I just didn't feel that in Our Mutual Friend.Dickens does succeed with his customary wit. I was glad that the underdogs won in the end, even those that seemed to play only a small role in the novel's events. But the ending was too formulaic for my post-modern tastes (the villians die, the heros marry), but I do give it four stars, for though this may be my least favorite Dicken's novel thus far (I've read 4 others), it is leaps and bounds better than many of the world's novels.
Rating:
Summary: Almost a cracking thriller
Review: Our Mutual Friend was the last complete novel Dickens wrote and, until the BBC television adaptation was made in 1998, it has also been one of the more obscure. It's a long book - most of Dickens's books are very long - and there are a number of plot diversions that don't really go anywhere, the most glaring example being the sub-plot of the machinations of the unfortunately shackled together ne'er-do-wells Sophronia and Alfred Lammle: they are spectacularly unsuccessful in carrying out anything remotely sinister beyond oily ingratiation (Dickens wrote his novels in installments for his own magazine and probably had plans for this couple to be more effective in their collusions; perhaps he either changed his mind or was talked out of it - just as he was persuaded by Bulwer Lytton, author of The Last Days of Pompeii, to get Pip and Estella together at the end of Great Expectations). The other thread that fails in Our Mutual Friend is the incessant satirizing of social climbers: the Veneerings, Podsnaps and Lady Tippins are worthy of Dickens's scorn, but they take up too much space - it's satire too drawn out and not particularly consequential to the workings of the plot.
However the meaty bits of plot in Our Mutual Friend provide a delicious stew of adventure, intrigue, romance, violence and murder set amid the dust mounds and the fetid waterways of mid-nineteenth century London. Once again, Dickens proves his unmatched ability to describe dirt! Once you've entered Mr. Venus's taxidermy shop, or spent time with Rogue Riderhood on the Thames, it takes a while to get the smell of dust, embalming fluid, rotting corpses, mud, and death out of your consciousness.
The plot revolves around a hero forced to change his identity because of the terrible danger he finds himself in after inheriting a great pile of money (courtesy of piles of dust!). He is tested in his resolve by the capricious Bella Wilfer, as sexy a coquette as Dickens ever dared put into his oeuvre (which means she's really not very sexy at all but we're talking about Dickens here - the man had nine children but seemed to prefer to avoid the "unpleasantness" of sex in his work). At the same time Mr. Venus and the ghastly Silas Wegg conspire to transfer the lucrative dust from Mr Boffin, the hero's other benefactor, to themselves. Meanwhile a whole other universe of plot is making its way through the novel - this involves Lizzie Hexham (one of Dickens's almost sickeningly goody-goody heroines) and the men who love her. The scenes where Bradley Headstone declaims his wrath at his languid rival, Eugene Wrayburn, are thrilling in their intensity. Headstone is one of Dickens's great villains because he's totally consumed by his infatuation for Lizzie - we can feel the white-hot intensity of his desire to bed her - he's incapable of reining-back his terrible obsession. And Eugene is a worthy addition to Dickens's cast of characters - he becomes infatuated with and eventually grows to love Lizzie in spite of his almost terminal ennui.
Our Mutual Friend would have been a cracking thriller (with a bit of romance chucked in) if Dickens wasn't so profligate with his writing. Nevertheless it is worth persevering with. As always, the descriptions and the characters place this book in the realms of great literature, as most of Dickens's works are. However much his style becomes unfashionable, there are always redeeming features - his sharp observations and characterizations temper his galloping over-sentimentality and his tendency to waffle on in certain areas especially while trying to make a point about the society of the time is redeemed by his unmatched powers of description, particularly his ability to describe dirt in all its permutations.
Rating: 
Summary: sad
Review: reading "our mutual friend" is like watching michael jordan play basketball - today, i mean. every once in a while there is a flash of the old brilliance, but most of the time it's just a sad old man who is nothing but a shadow of his old great self. omf is a very tedious, convoluted, unrewarding read. what dickens no longer has in inventiveness, freshness, and creativity he tries to make up for with an overly complex structure and an abrupt and inelegant herky-jerky style. sadly, it just doesn't work. omf ranks up there with martin chuzzlewit for its sprawling unfocused storytelling. and it is on a par with oliver twist for giving the overall impression of being a badly and overtly contrived book. there is little art in omf. not for want of trying, though. one good thing in the book is the character of eugene wrayburn. wrayburn's a variant of the sydney carton characer in 'tale of two cities', only here he is more fleshed out. the conversations between wrayburn and his legal pal mortimer lightwood are remarkably modern - ie, they could have been written today. the narrative design of the book is also interesting. few books are written that don't rely on a central character to carry the story along. omf is unique in that it gives more or less equal time to a great number of characters. in this way it's like a robert altman movie - 'gosford park', or 'nashville', or 'short cuts'. it's a daring experiment, but dickens throws so many characters into the air, that even he can't help dropping a few along the way. 900 pages is simply not long enough to do what he's trying to do. either he should have written an even longer book (heaven forbid!), or, he should have cut a few characters. as it is, the result is not satisfactory. if you are a die-hard dickens fan then read this book. eveyone else would be better off reading dombey, bleak house, or even little dorrit. all are better examples of the late dickens.
Rating: 
Summary: This is my favorite novell.
Review: Some may say that it is one of Dickens' darkest novels, but I only see the humor and the intricacy. This is a novel where he focuses on greed and hypocrisy. The sub-plots are masterfully inter-woven with the main plot (surrounding John Harmon's inheritance) and there is a surprise twist in the end, which makes everything come out blissful. (Like most of Dickens' novels.) Dickens explores some of the bizarre occupations that might have been found in old London. For example: Dress-Maker for Dolls, Taxidermist/Curator of Human Bones, Street Sales of Ballads and Folk-songs, and (of course) Purchaser/Processor of Garbage (or "Dust"). There are so many examples of brilliant and hilarious stories he uses to illustrate human nature that, to begin to list them (which I could) would not do them justice. Sure, there may be some dark subjects, but that is part of Dickens' creativity and therefore part of this masterpiece--full of intrigue and dark humor. My all! -time favorite novel. Note: The Penguin edition always has good notes at the back of the book to explain dated references.
Rating:
Summary: An engaging novel
Review: The last of Charles Dickens's completed novels, "Our Mutual Friend" is an amalgamation of social themes that the author has already discussed in other works like "Great Expectations." Yet somehow, the author manages to invest them with a peculiar power in this final work, while still maintaining the comic and even grotesque elements that made his early works so popular. It is also the novel in which there there remains only a murky distinction between the heroes and the villains, each of whom becomes both likeable and repulsive in turn. And throughout the novel are the wonderful symbols of the dust heaps, of the Thaimes river, of life, money, death, destruction, and resurrection. I recommed the Penguin addition, which has Dickens's carefully planned out working notes for the novel.
Rating: 
Summary: To many subplots
Review: The main plot of murder and the person in disgust really drive the story, but all the subplots in the book is quite tedious. It makes you feel like u want to drive through those part, and get at the heart of plot. But all-in-all the novel ends w/ everyone deserving what they got, as a Dickens story should be.
Rating:
Summary: To many subplots
Review: The main plot of murder and the person in disgust really drive the story, but all the subplots in the book is quite tedious. It makes you feel like u want to drive through those part, and get at the heart of plot. But all-in-all the novel ends w/ everyone deserving what they got, as a Dickens story should be.
Rating:
Summary: An Unhelpful Introduction
Review: The two star rating is aimed at the introductory material chosen by the editors of the Modern Library Classics Edition, not at all at Dickens' novel. An introduction should facilitate the reader's comprehension of the work. Particularly, one expects Modern Library editions to be demotic, helping keep classics alive for readers who are not up to speed on high toned literary criticism. The essay by Richard Gaughan which was chosen to "introduce" Dickens' most complex and difficult novel requires more effort than the work itself. Not a good situation.
Rating:
Summary: A Startling Vision
Review: There are at least half a dozen moments in Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, the last book the great master was to complete before his death, when it becomes clear to the reader that he/she has left the London of nineteenth century earth for one deep inside the nightmare landscape of sleep. This is an angry, disturbing book (as all books by old men are), one that presents a vision of a great city coming apart at the seams and stuffed with sinners of all shapes and sizes. At the same time, and this is what makes Dickens both a great artist and a great humanist, there are flashes of beauty and humor that literally bring tears to one's eyes. At a time when so many of our own great cities are on the verge of imploding, there is no one hundred year old novel more pertinent--or saddingly familiar
Rating:
Summary: The best Dickens book I've read
Review: This book is great. It is very complex and full of suspense so i never get tired of reading it! When i first read it in 8th grade i was impressed by the size until i found out how fast it went. This book does get a little odd sometimes; like when he compares Mr. Twemlow to a large table, but thats just how colorful Dickens's language is.I would recomend this book to anyone who enjoys a little romance, adventure, horror, mystery, suspense and/or humor.
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