Rating: 
Summary: Much ado about nothing much.
Review: Though generally entertaining, I found this to be, overall, a disappointing book. Dickens' characters here are more cartoon than ever. The villains are, to a man, totally beyond redemption; the heroes are goodness beyond heaven's greatest ambitions. (In fact, the good people are so sickeningly good, you almost start cheering for the awful uncle Ralph!) Plot lines run off into empty corners. The travelling play actors take up a hundred pages, but contribute nothing to the plot. Mr Lillyvick, the water clerk, and his patient family (patiently waiting for him to die and leave them his money) pop up regularly but provide nothing more sthan ome mildly humourous diversions. People die conveniently. Everything seems to go the way of our hero. And Dickens' usual set of amazing coincidences are more amazing than ever. In no other Dickens novel is it so clear that he is writing for a periodical (and paid, I suspect, by the word.) Chapter introductions go on for pages, dead-end corners are written in everywhere. Still worth reading, but not to be considered among Dickens' best work
Rating: 
Summary: Review
Review: When I first met Dickens in some dark library in the halcyon days, back when I wasn't expected to earn my keep and act sensibly, I didn't give what it takes to appreciate Dickens. In school I read Great Expectation and Tale of Two Cities reluctantly, almost as if in reading them I was scaring off all of the patience I could muster in reading Steinbeck or Kesey or something more savory.When I picked this up, read it, and decided to review it, a roadblock loomed: Did I love this book because it was one of Dicken's earliest and seemed to nonethelss be his strongest and most entertaining book? Was it this and/or the fact that reading the two aforementioned books cover to cover, word for word, was a silent and unconscious expression of my secret love for Dickens? Or was it just the book itself that elicted this almost euphoric mild-enthusiasm? Whatever the reason for it, I enjoyed this book. The storyline is dynamic and diverting, but the pace of the prose is leisurely. It is, after all, close to 1000 pages long. The plot is that of a Dickens novel we've all either read or heard in abstract: Nicholas, the son of a poor relation in the family, sets out on some adventures, thrashes Wackford Squeers, befriends Yorkshiremen and joins an acting troupe and saves a helpless ward from abuse and misery, comes back and protects and saves his family from the evil usurer uncle Ralph, on and on until you wonder how a line of narrative so simplistic can encompass 900 pages. What kept me at this book, even at those rare moments at which the pat and summary triumph of good over evil being repeated over and over almost tried my patience, were the caricatures. Dicken's forte was always in disabling his enemies with words. There are the host of villains to be cut down here, both by humor and by scathing realism: Poor schools, the British welfare system, and moneylenders are given bitter portraits in Wackford Squeers and his squalid Yorkshire school, and in both Ralph and Arthur Gride, who vies with Nicholas for the hand of Madeline Bray. Squeers himself is a comic figure, despite his violent tendencies. He is a scathing example of what Dickens seemed to feel was the cancer of Victorian society: A stupid man with intellectual affectations, a man crual to children who nonetheless treats his own children more or less affectionately, bringing into critical light the common family man. Mr. Mantalini is an on-target depiction of an indiscreet loverboy, a man who abuses the trust of those who most love him and tolerate him. His downfall is both comic and morally justified. The story is leavened as well with many of Dickens' trademark "nice guys": Both the protagonist and his young, consumptive friend Smike are aided on their journeys by Dickens' idea of good hearted people: The wealthy but compassionate Cheeryble brothers and their jovial clerk Tim, Miss La Creevy, a wonderful soinster who shields Mrs. aNickleby and Nicholas' sister Kate from Ralph as much as she can, John Browdie, the Yorkshireman responsible for both Nicholas' and Smike's salvation (one with money, the other in an even more admirable way), and Mr. Newman Noggs, Ralph's lovable clerk who aids Nicholas in his every pursuit. Here a problem occurs to me: It's the broad brush syndrome. Think of this: Squeers, by his very nature, can't do good, is unadulterated evil, and gets comeuppance-The end. Same for Ralph, same for Arthur Gride. Nicholas, Smike, Noggs, La Creevy, etc., are all virtuous, models of probity and Christian ideals. They are lavishly rewarded. OK: Why, Charlie, is everything that clear cut? I agree that Squeers is a worthless human being, and deserves what he gets. But is that the only dimension to the man? The same can be said of his family, and of Arthus Gride the suspicious usurer, and of Mr. Snawley, who tries to bring Smike back to the abusive Squeers. Ralph is not so easy to pin: He is seen as both intelligent and somewhat compassionate, though it is only toward the end of the book that this is seen. The point: If this is the only dimension to evil people, namely their transgressions and wickedness, and if Nicholas and his friends are necessarily good and infallible, why does it take 900 pages for the malevolent to be thwarted and the good saluted? And why can't the old addage "Virtue is Its Own Reward" never explored and/or established? After all, if Dostoevsky taught me anything, it's that the good and bad both get knocks. Golyadkin or the Man From Underground or Raskolnikov may do terrible things or could be beautiful and pure, but they all take a fall sometime. Some fellow reviewers will probably condemn me for "impatience". It's simply not a matter of impatience: It's a matter of artistic and situational credibility. If the good guys always win, why are the formalities of plot and character development and rising and falling action and hyperbole even needed? Just call all the characters static, apportion each his deserved share, and don't spend 900 pages moralizing. I enjoyed this book, though. Pessimist that I am, I found my enthusiasm refreshed by the good-hearted machinations of Noggs against Ralph. I laughed heartily at Mr. Mantalini, pondering at the same time how Mrs. Mantalini could tolerate him so long even as he wrecked her business and drove her near bankruptcy. When Miss La Creevy and Tim Linkinwater married, I shed a tear, though I later snickered at my impressionability. Such characters as the basically good Lord Frederick Verisopht, who goes from villain to decent human, renewed my interest. I really did enjoy this book. I just didn't think that the black and white was as appealing as more colorful and well rounded characters and scenarios would have been.
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