Rating: 
Summary: Well-constructed novel with important underlying message
Review: Like so many of Dickens' novels, Oliver Twist is a fantastically crafted and engrossing novel. Dickens follows the life of a young orphan boy, Oliver, who grows up amidst desperate poverty in London in the early 19th Century. Dickens leads the reader on a delightful and engaging romp, as Oliver escapes his orphanage, gets mixed up in the wrong crowd, and ultimately comes out on top.The story within Oliver Twist is very engrossing, replete with many twists, turns and surprises that are occasionally tragic but more often witty or flat out hilarious. The characters are all superbly developed, and the multiple story lines are intricately and cleverly woven together. Oliver Twist is an excellent introduction to Dickens, and patient readers will find this novel accessible. The intricate plotline does require some concentration, while some readers may be annoyed by Dickens' notoriously lengthy sentences. This is an important book to read for it is heavily engrained in Anglo-American culture and most first-time readers will recognize many of the names (Fagin, Artful Dodger) and scenes from previous cultural references. While clearly enjoyable at the superficial level, the novel also makes a powerful statement about poverty and the power of the human spirit in the face of depravity.
Rating:
Summary: Forsaken Child
Review: The creative novel Oliver Twist, written by Charles Dickens in 1838, defines a classic of all times. This intense story reflects a young boy's life in London with no family or place to go. The novel begins with Oliver's mother dying, while giving birth to her son and the father remains unknown. Throughout the novel we learn about Oliver's struggles on living on his own. The young boy is befriended on the way and taken in my Fagin. Fagin along with the Artful Dodger invite Oliver to stay with them and become one of them, a thief. While going on one of the adventures of pick pocketing Oliver is caught by Mr.Brownlow who instead of reprimanding the young lad, decides to rise him. Throughout the book Oliver searches for the answers to his past while trying to stay alive on the streets of London. Miraculously, Oliver's family lay right under his nose the whole time. The theme of Oliver Twist examines the importance of a family. Oliver plays a forsaken child, abandoned by all-parental support and thrown into the cruel world at a very young age to live on his own. Oliver's early years taught him to fend for himself and he suffers from never experiencing a loving and nurturing childhood. The tone throughout the novel focused on abandonment and how to live and survive on your own. The setting of the book plays a powerful part as the story unfolded. Dickens describes the setting of London and all the places that Oliver stays very descriptively. "The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy order. The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age and dirt..." (page. 56). Dickens explains the facilities that were available to poor Oliver, and makes them sound unbearable. He does an excellent job making the setting come alive and feel the characters thoughts. I would recommend this novel because I found it very moving and towards the end you are only hoping for the best for poor Oliver.
Rating: 
Summary: Literary quality does not exist
Review: While cultural pundits try to convince you that some literature is better than other literature, the truth is that all art is relative to individial tastes. Thus, it doesn't make any sense to think that a novel like this one is really any better than say, Michael Crichton or Stephen King. Aesthetic standards can't be grounded. Thus, don't listen to anyone who tries to distinguish between "serious" works of literature like this one and allegedly "lesser" novels. The distinction is entirely illusory, because no novels are "better" than any others, and the concept of a "great novel" is an intellectual hoax.
Rating:
Summary: Thieves, Murderers and all of their Ilk
Review: This book surprised me, not by the quality of its writing, which one can expect from Charles Dickens, but by the violent, lusty primal quality of the story. This is no dry musty tome, but a vital novel that arouses both passion and intellect. A literal page turner, I found myself having more than one sleepless night when I just couldn't put it down. Inside are some of the major characters in the realm of fiction; Fagin and his gang of child thieves, including the Artful Dodger. Nancy, the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold. Master Charles Bates (was this a pun even then?) Bad Bill Sikes, who shows the darker edge to all of this dangerous fun, and the innocent, pure Oliver Twist, who is the very definition of nature over nurture. A great book, and one that I am glad to have finally read.
Rating:
Summary: A Page-Turner
Review: A novel of this size can be daunting for the reader. "If I start this book, I'm going to have to spend the next month finishing it". That's what I thought anyway. But in Oliver Twist I sailed through the pages. It's rare that a classic, and I have read many of them, becomes a page-turner but this one did. Maybe I was lucky in not having seen the film versions prior to the reading of the book because I desperately wanted to find out what happened to Oliver and the multitude of other brilliantly written characters who inhabit the pages of Dickens' classic. The plot is simple. A boy escapes his orphan home to live in London with a group of thieves and pickpockets. He's saved from this depraved life by a kindly, lonely old gentleman. But the villains, Bill Sykes and especially Fagin, fear that the boy may rat them out and so they kidnap him back. Can Oliver make it back to the life he deserves? Oliver's story is not a very originally one, but it is enlivened by some of the greatest characters I've ever seen written. My personal favourites and there are many, are Noah Claypole who becomes a principle player and a very funny one at that, near the book's conclusion; and Mr. Brownlow, who's catchphrase "I'll eat my own head" had me bursting into laughter. The book is diminished by its excessive sentimentality at the conclusion. Its female characters, apart from the courageous Nancy, are written in a golden light so as to become fantasies rather than the gloriously dirty reality of their male counterparts. A sub-plot between Mary and her boyfriend is ridiculously excessive. Against these weaknesses, the book is a triumph of character. Often memorably played on screen, the two villains have become more famous than the title character, who is slightly simpering. Fagin is deliciously smarmy and Sykes is evil incarnate. They get their comuppance in justifiably brutal fashion. Dickens like most of us was a sucker for a happy ending.
Rating:
Summary: POOR LITTLE TWIST
Review: Right off the bat, I've never been a fan of Dickens. To me, there's always been something mercenary about his writing due to the fact that his novels were written to be serialized in magazines of his time. From one week to the next, he was just winging it, creating it as he went. While his improvisation is impressive, it lended itself to bloatedness and inefficency. I've read or tried to read about 5 of his works and never liked the writing. Despite that, I've tried to keep a positive outlook about the guy. I mean, with his status in the Western canon, maybe I just wasn't getting it. Thankfully, I really enjoyed Oliver Twist. Finally, a book of his that I liked. Oliver Twist is an orphan whose father is unknown and whose mother died during childbirth. Consequently he is raised in the equivalent of the 19th century English welfare system. His raising by the state is despicable. The powers that be in the government of that time, much like our government, had to deal with the problem of indigents taking advantage of the welfare system. They made the homeless shelters and lunchlines so atrocious that the down-on-their luck would HAVE to look elsewhere for help. They went on the assumption that all the displaced were bums just looking for handouts. So the honest and dishonest were treated the same way. Oliver Twist is a victim of this in that the daily meals he is served in the workhouse as a child are not enough to sustain a human being. Foolishly or bravely, one day he stands up and states the famous line, "Please sir, I want some more." In return for this he is bundled off to be an apprentice undertaker. After some trouble with another boy in the house, he runs away, in the process meeting The Artful Dodger, who indoctrinates him into a gang of pickpockets and thieves led by the Jew Fagin. The question is whether or not a boy who is basically good can escape from such an evil life, or whether he will fall victim to it. This was a great book. The characters were great and the novel has a dark undertone that I wouldn't expect from Dickens. Unlike David Copperfield, this work does not exhaust itself through its very length. The ending tended to be a little too talky and clean.
Rating:
Summary: It is a good novel.
Review: Anybody who claims that Oliver Twist is not a good novel should be ashamed of themselves. First of all, Mr. Dickens wrote this in 1838 WHEN HE WAS TWENTY-FOUR! To all of you people who claim that this novel is boring and the worst book they ever read, let me ask you this one question - do you think you can write this well at 24 years of age? I think not. So, you basically have no right to criticize this novel. As for its not being as good as Mr. Dicken's later works, you must remember that he had less experience at twenty-four then he did when he published his other wotks. All in all, I liked it much better than A Christmas Carol.
Rating: 
Summary: The Language is Easier to Understand
Review: The meandering plots of most Dickens novels leave me cold most of the time, but I found this book easier to understand and enjoy. I'm glad I finally pulled the book off the shelf and read it.
Rating:
Summary: Biting Social Commentary, Pretty Good Story
Review: Starting with Oliver's premature birth to a dying mother looked on by a gin-swilling nurse in a parish workhouse, Dickens tone is extremely satirical. Though his meanings are clear, his craftsmanship with the English language is in rare form in the beginning of Oliver Twist. The "distinguished and enlightened gentlemen" who's reform policies for the workhouse are raked over the coals in glowing language represent an unusual type of Dickens character for me. Usually even Dicken's villains are multi-faceted characters whose motives we understand though disapprove of. Here, the Directors of the parish who eventually pay to get rid of Oliver, are difficult to conceive of. The hardships of the workhouse inmates, more especially what seems like intentional starvation, seem hard to believe though as I read this book, the death of a foster child in New Jersey from starvation brought to light many things going on in twenty-first century reality which had seemed implausible in this nineteenth century novel. The satirical language is often humorous though the subject matter is not and makes the account more palatable. The first of the book is spent in this way which seems really to be more of Dicken's social commentary than pure story line. In true Dickens style, each of the characters Oliver meets throughout the story are part of a larger, more elaborate plot line that the story is ever trying to unfold. After being apprenticed to the coffinmaker Mr. Sowerberry, he is taunted by the charity boy - Noah Claypole - until he makes a break for London. Accidentally falling into the clutches of local fence Fagin whose aim it is to turn him to a life of crime, Oliver struggles to break free with the help of various good hearted people he befriends along the way despite his situation. It is only through their help who believe in him against all odds that we find that Fagin's attempts to make Oliver into a thief or at least believe that he has broken the law is not entirely the result of chance. As a shadowy figure going by the name of Monks attempts to remove proofs of Oliver's origins, it is up to his new friends to piece together the puzzle of Oliver's life and help him to break free once and for all from the poverty of his existence. Until Oliver's friends get involved, I wasn't entirely grabbed by the story line but I don't know if that was from my inability to connect with the workhouse characters or my familiarity with the early part of the story. Once they got involved and I was into a part of the story I knew nothing about, I did really get into it. Like A Tale of Two Cities, I would say that this one starts a little slow but takes off towards the middle. Unlike that novel, however, its lacks the profound nobility, with some characters having little value except as a vehicle in the commentary (like Mr. Bumble). The Tale of Two Cities was not an out and out social commentary (it was hidden well within the folds of the pages) but I would have to say that Twist is. It is a good story, well worth reading, but its lasting value is not in the character of the orphan Oliver - it is in the passion of the author against the wrongs of the then welfare system. It seems more to me to be a moralism: a tale to remind us of ourselves and to guard against the mistakes of the past and to ensure the lives of the vulnerable in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: okay
Review: I'm a junior in high school and I had to read Dickens's novel in my sophmore year. I liked it. It's my favorite book. When I first read it though, I wasn't looking forward to it. Dickens writes too much and uses a lot of big words. The entire first paragraph is practically one big sentence of how the name of the town Oliver was born in is not important. That's not a very good way to start a book a high school student has to read. The best parts of the book are with Fagin's gang, anything not about that tends to get boring.
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