NB – The is an ancient archival review, written many years ago, prob’ for Amazon UK. I’m trying to get as much of that old content up on here as I can.
I love Dickens: great fun to read, emotionally engaging, and mixing forays into social realism with ripping good yarns.
Okay, so his social realism isn’t always award winning documentary grade, and his characterisations are very stagey, his heroes and villains being rather like the ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ of childhood. And he’s so very sentimental.
But, heck, he’s nonetheless a great and engaging writer. You’d have to have quite a cold hard Scrooge-like heart not to love him! There’s only one thing I noted with less keenness, and that was the style of his writing for ‘yokel-speak’.
Modern writers have made great advances with use of the vernacular. But, as with much Dickens, Hard Times moved me to tears… corn-ball that I am! And, at the price I paid for it* – £2! – it was a no-brainer.
*That was a stand alone paperback purchase. We now also have it as part of a multi-volume hardback complete edition!