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Fresh of the tails of Nicholas Nickelby, I continued my Dickens streak by finally reading the one book it seems I should have read a long time ago. With the famous opening phrase, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," this is the one book I think almost everyone I know read in high school, but I managed to miss it because in honors classes, we read a more challenging Dickens novel, Hard Times. I downloaded this book from some online website as an mp3 book and was pretty impressed with the sound quality (most of the public domain downloads sound like they are made with inexpensive microphones).

The story takes place beginning in 1775. True to Dickens' penchant for humor, he introduces the harshness of the times while also overemphasizing the year. I love a good beginning. It starts off with a dark night on a dark trail and proceeds to a dark apartment where a man is "Recalled to Life" when introduced to his long lost daughter Lucie. The man is Doctor Manette, a Frenchman who was once long imprisoned and has lived for several years making shoes in his sequestered room above a wine shop. Five years later, Doctor Manette and his daughter Lucie serve as witnesses in London, in a court case against Charles Darnay, a man suspected of treason against England. Lucie and Charles fall in love and eventually marry, and they face great peril together when Charles returns to France to help a servant of his. Charles is imprisoned due to his high birth (he was nephew of the Marquis Evremonde) and the fact that all aristocrats are being killed by the guillotine at the beginning of the French Revolution. The plot takes several twists and, as always, any character that doesn't seem to be of much significance, always ends up being as important as any other, and it leads to a great ending.

A Tale of Two Cities felt unlike any of Dickens' other novels to me. It takes on a much more serious tone, and since its central locale ends up being in the past and in France, it has a much different texture to it. In fact, it almost reminded me of the Scarlet Pimpernel, although it was less melodramatic and wasn't quite so mysterious. I liked it, though, because it was a departure from the familiar.

One thing can always be said of Dickens, and that is that his novels always paint a clear picture of the times. Even though this was an earlier time, the picture is strong, and it serves well to help the reader (I'm still thinking about how this was used as high school reading material) understand the context of the French Revolution. I loved the juxtaposition of England and France, as well as the English and French characters. I also appreciated the portrayal of the French prisons, courts, and especially Madame Guillotine, which was described with such vehemence and poetic language.

The story proceeds like a soap opera, as always, but is always entertaining and often heart-wrenching in a way I didn't expect it to be. I found the story more emotionally involving than other Dickens novel, perhaps because it rang a little more true and was not over-exaggerated. There are no characters with obvious names and the sense of humor is kept to a minimum. As a result, it was really nice to see Dickens in this form, and it was a great book, and definitely one of my favorites (wait, do I say that about all of them?).