Wirral Libraries Bookbuzz discussion

In the end I enjoyed this book - it was our selection for June 2020. It is clearly an important piece of literature beginning and ending with two of the most famous sentences ever written ('It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, ..' and 'It is a far, far better thing that I do, then I have ever done; ..'). Dickens is, of course, a classic author in the English Language that we are all supposed to know. A number of the reading group read this book for O Level - I think I read Nicholas Nickleby. So apart from enjoying the final action section I am pleased that I can now say I've read the book.

However, there were many sections, particularly in the first half of the book which I found a struggle to read - too often this had a soporific effect and in some cases I struggled to understand what the sentence or paragraph was supposed to mean. The one I can pick out is at the start of Chapter 16 in Book Two - I still don't understand what the second sentence in the first paragraph means!

Earlier in the year (well before 'Lock Down') I had picked up and started Hilary Mantel's book on the French Revolution 'A Place of Greater Safety' after three or four months I am not quite halfway through that book. It makes the success of reading Dickens' novel more notable. My conclusion from both books is that novels aren't the way to understand history but also that the French Revolution was a much more complicated time than my O Level History explained to me. I could probably do with reading a proper history of the period to get some of the issues into a more balanced perspective. I get the impression that Dickens has stretched historical reality not just to help with the plot but also as part of showing the wickedness of revolutions - a view which his Victorian customers would probably support (I seem to recall that there was a lot of unease in London during the various revolutionary uprisings in the 1830s).

I thought the pace of action picked up sharply in the final 'Book' and helped me finish the novel with enthusiasm. The earlier sections seemed more obscure to me and some of the scene setting designed to help us understand the motives of the characters took more time than I would ordinarily have enjoyed. By the denouement I felt an emotional attachment to the success of the lead characters and was pleased to see Miss Pross emerge as a heroine and sad that Dickens didn't feel he could rescue Sydney Carton in some improbable way at the last minute.