Friday, June 1, 2012

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens


Welcome to my first post of A Victorian Celebration, hosted by Allie of A Literary Odyssey!   I hope you'll visit her website to see all the Victorians people are reading this summer.  I have a lot of Victorians to read and review, so I'm very excited about it.  I'll be posting all summer long and I'll even be hosting a giveaway of my own, so stay tuned.

On to my book review!  I'm slowly working my way through the novels of Charles Dickens, and with Our Mutual Friend I have finished eleven of his fourteen major completed novels.   It's the last novel Dickens completed before his death, and I was worried it wouldn't hold up to some of my other favorites.  To my delight, OMF is now among my favorites.

Without too many details for fear of spoilers, here's the setup of the novel:

One evening, a man named Gaffer and his daughter Lizzie are out on a boat on the Thames River, when they find a dead body.  Gaffer makes his living basically scrounging whatever he can find floating in the river (frequently, it turns out, from drowning victims).  It turns out this particular dead man is John Harmon, the heir to an enormous fortune.  Harmon had just returned from abroad to claim his inheritance, which came with the strict stipulation that he marry a particular young lady chosen by his father, and whom he had never met.  Instead, the inheritance now goes to Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, faithful servants to the wealthy Mr. Harmon, who made his fortune from garbage heaps.

Now that the Boffins are newly wealthy, a host of people with questionable motives start to circle like vultures, trying to get a piece of their wealth, including Mr. Wegg, a poet who is paid to read to Mr. Boffin; Mr. Rokesmith, his new secretary; and Bella Wilfer, the young lady who was the bride-to-be, now not quite a widow.   It also explores the murder of Harmon and the intertwining fates of the Gaffer family, who become linked with the Boffins and the mysterious case.  This book also includes romance, humor, and satire.

Like Martin Chuzzlewit, much of the plot is based on people's greed, though it's a very different story.  Like Bleak House, it's a murder mystery.  Typically for Dickens, the characters are a mix of the grotesque, the comic, and the angelic ingenues -- this time, there are three young ladies eligible for the part of Dickens' heroine, though I found two of the three much less irritating than Dickens' typical saintly young ladies.  I did end up loving several of the characters, and couldn't wait to find out what happened to them next.  I was lucky enough to get the Naxos audiobook version of this from my library, and listened to quite a bit of it in the car on the way to and from work.  However, I got so caught up in the story I also had a print copy going as well, because some days I just couldn't wait to find out what happened next.

I really enjoyed this novel, though like Dickens' later works, it does have a lot of intertwining plots and characters to keep track of -- at one point I started a list, and I think I lost count at about 40 characters.  There were a few side plots I didn't care much about, but I do believe if I knew more about English politics and history I would have appreciated them more -- they were mostly political satire about the workings of Parliament.

Years ago, in college, I passed up a chance to take a course on Dickens in favor of Tolstoy, simply because of the reading load -- I think there were three or four novels for Dickens, and when I added up the pages it was more than 2000 pages for an eleven week class (we were on quarters).  In the Tolstoy class, it was about 1300 pages for War and Peace and that was pretty much it.   I'd never read any Dickens and was so overwhelmed I chickened out and registered for Tolstoy instead.  I liked War and Peace but I'll always regret not taking Dickens when I had the chance.  

Well, I'm making up for it now.  I loved Our Mutual Friend, and it's now one of my favorite Dickens novels.  I only need to read three more before I've finished them all -- The Pickwick Papers; The Old Curiosity Shop; and Barnaby Rudge.  Then I'm going to read The Mystery of Edwin Drood and I'll have completed them all!

17 comments:

  1. I've seen this on several people's lists as their favorite Dickens novel. I think it's really impressive that you've managed to read so many of his novels - I don't know anyone who has read the whole list.

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  2. I read Great Expectations in college, but then I don't think I read any more Dickens for about 20 years! I really started reading them about 5 years ago, and I usually read a couple every year. The most I read in one year was four, but most of them were the shorter Dickens.

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  3. Congratulations! Eleven novels! That's truly impressive. The plot sounds very much like Dickens and I will surely pick this up sooner or later, but up to now its length was intimidating for me. Yes, I know I'm a coward :)

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    1. I was able to find an excellent audiobook version, which really helped me get through it. It's the Naxos Audiobook, narrated by David Timson. Of course I still had a print copy when I wanted to read it at home or on my lunch, but doing some of it on audio definitely helped move it along much more quickly, though it did take me over a month.

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  4. Our Mutual Friend is my favorite Dickens novel!!!

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    1. I loved it, almost as much as Bleak House. I'll be sad when I've finished all of Dickens but then there are about 40 Trollope novels I haven't read yet. . .

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  5. I'm reading this for the Victorian Celebration and after only a few chapters already loving it.

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    1. It's really good, isn't it? There are a lot of great characters to root for. I got so involved in the story, I couldn't wait to find out what happened next. One of Dickens' best!

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  6. I'm so impressed with the rate at which you're racing through all of Dickens's novels.

    I'm hoping to read one for the Victorian event. I'm more interested in Our Mutual Friend but feel like I should finish Great Expectations first -- for some reason I struggle with this novel.

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    1. I'm averaging about two a year, which is pretty good. I think I'm going to try and read Pictures from Italy in July, which I've had for a couple of years now. It's short, and I've never read any of his nonfiction. And my daughter is going to Italy this summer, so that might be very timely. Or maybe not, since she's going without me!

      Great Expectations is good but I do find it rather dark. I can't remember it having any especially quirky and fun characters, though it's been awhile since I read it. Of the shorter novels, Oliver Twist is my favorite.

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  7. I've been working my way through Dickens, but I've not completed as many as you. Pickwick is funny; Old Curiosity Shop is sad. Haven't read Barnaby Rudge.

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    1. I started OCS a couple of years ago and some of the characters were creepy, which put me off. I haven't heard much about Barnaby; I've heard some people love it. Maybe it's the time period that puts people off -- "the riots of 'eighty" -- which I know nothing about. Not as interesting as the French Revolution, I guess. My library just got the Naxos audiobook and those are always good, so I'll give it a try at some point. I can't read too much Dickens too close together.

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  8. Interesting that the remaining Dickens novels you have to read are among the earliest. I do like the premise of Our Mutual Friend, and look forward to reading it in the next year or so.

    I think a full course of just Dickens would be daunting and not just the page count. I preferred the Victorian lit survey classes that I took--Austen to Dickens and then Eliot to James. This whetted my appetite for more Victorian lit without exhasting me with one author.

    > I got so caught up in the story I also had a print copy going as well, because some days I just couldn't wait to find out what happened next.

    I find I do the same thing!

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    1. Yes, I guess that's true -- Pickwick is the first, of course, and Barnaby Rudge and OCS are back to back, pretty early in his career. No rhyme or reason to it, however. I wasn't especially interested in BR or Chuzzlewit, and I thought those would be last, but an online group was reading Chuzzlewit so I gave it a try. One of my favorites is Oliver Twist, and I think that's the second novel.

      I like the idea of a Victorian survey class as well -- it occurred to me I could spend the next two months reading one novel each by Dickens, Trollope, Hardy, Eliot, and one of the Brontes. That would be a really nice taste of the major authors. However, I have some unread books on the TBR shelves by Margaret Oliphant and George Gissing, so they'll probably be up next. I do want to squeeze in another Trollope if I have time, but probably not Eliot or Hardy this time around.

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  9. I know I'll never read all of Dickens so I really enjoy reading your thoughts on his novels.
    I will look forward to reading your posts for the Victorian Celebration - I decided not to participate in the summer because I'm too bogged down with my other challenges, though I am reading Vanity Fair and just finished The Warden and have started a book about Prince Albert's death...hmmm, maybe I should participate!

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    1. Anbolyn, sounds like you have your own Victorian Celebration in the works already!

      I'm basically incorporating books that are already on my TBR shelves, or that I'm reading for other challenges. I just have so many Victorians on the shelves already, it's embarrassing! Gives me an excuse to try and clear some space for more.

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  10. I was thinking of reading this or The Old Curiosity Shop, but I'm not sure I'll have time. I plan to read The Haunted House (compilation story created with Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Hesba Stretton, George Sala, and Adelaide Procter) because that one is much shorter. I want to get through at least 5 or 6 books for the Victorian Celebration, and the one I'm reading now (Twain's Autobiography) is 500-pages, so I need to be careful with the chunksters!

    I'm really looking forward to reading this one, though, and then reading Drood by Dan Simmons.

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