So I, like, love Dickens. I totally fan girl for Dickens, I love Copperfield and Bleak House and all of it, I love the guy, he's the best (well not the best, but he's pretty damn good)
I've tried to read a Dickens a year for the past few years and I've honestly never really been disappointed. I mean sure some have been better than others, and some have dragged a little with no real memorable characters ( you know who you are Hard Times) but there have been no real duds.
And then came 'Tale of Two Cities'. I'll be honest I wasn't really looking forward to this one from the start. I knew it was set earlier than the other Dickens I'd read, I knew it was about the French revolution and honestly that sounded a bit 'big' for the Charlie I knew. Other Dickens were more subtle in their commentary, there's like a consistent, low grade, 'poverty bad' vibe going through all his other work that is both true (poverty IS bad) and subtle. Bleak House is clearly telling us that the British legal system was pretty cuckoo for coco pops back then, but it didn't interfere with a solid story and interesting characters. But I feared that the French Revolution, with all its decapitating, and plundering, not to mention its Frenchness (I mean do you get more quintessentially British than Dickens?!?) was not really going to be in Charles' wheelhouse...
And yeah I was completely bloody right!
The book has two speeds, deathly dull slow, and heads flying off fast. It starts with the minor intrigue of a French doctor getting locked up for a really long time in the Bastille, before being let out (for reasons that I still can't fathom and actually can't bring myself to care about) and finding his now grown up daughter. They live in England and life progresses at a snails pace, they have exactly 4 male friends and Dickens spends about 200 pages simply describing their friends, house, and deeply unremarkable and not very interesting lives. Sure I think Dickens thinks we're thinking through all of this 'ahh I'll keep my reading in state of suspense, dying to find out what it was that got the doctor locked up, I am the master of intrigue and I twirl my moustache in triumph' when really I'm just like...
So yeah after that total bore-fest, the daughter is married to a French dude, Charles, who's actually an aristocrat in hiding again for reasons that aren't really clear as the revolution hasn't started yet, other than, like, we meet his uncle once and he was a bit of a dick and then got murdered, which I thought was actually Charles which actually made me like the guy, except it turns out later I was wrong. So aristocrat in hiding, marries French doctors daughter in a courtship entirely unseen and unremarkable except we're just supposed to accept that they are, actually, totally madly in love. Then Charles gets a letter from some servant saying he's been locked up by mad peasants who think he's been treating them badly but he actually hasn't because Charles (as his master) told him to let them all of their debts, but it just seems the peasants forgot that. Charles is a total non-starter as a character, he has next to no dialogue for the whole book and just sort of makes bad decisions and loves his wife like a 2D cutout. He makes what has to be the worst decision ever and heads off to France without telling his family (who don't even know he's actually an aristocrat) to rescue this servant who's never appeared in this story yet despite it already being half way through but he's totally worth risking his life for. Shock! Horror! Charles is arrested and awaits a good beheading (which would arguably improve his IQ) within about 4 seconds of being in France.
And to make matters worse, his wife, father in law, two servants, friend and small daughter all decide to move to France to help him, endangering their lives as well. Time slows down again, as everyone just sits around waiting for Charles to get beheaded and the doctor tries his level best to stop this happening. He almost manages it, but then it's revealed that the doctor, who is popular with the crazy, bloodthirsty revolutionaries, ended up in prison because some rich dudes kidnapped him, forced him to try and help a woman they raped to (eventual) death and killed all the family of, and then when he tried to tell the authorities about what they did they had him locked up.
So many questions here, like if these rich dudes killed the family of the woman they raped, why wouldn't they just kill the doctor that was going to tell on them too? In fact why the hell would they bother getting a doctor for her anyway, because they don't seem to want her to live and potentially tell the world of their vileness? Who eventually lets the doctor go too? Like he lives by himself in some dungeon, locked up without trial by immoral rich rapists to keep him quiet, who gets round to freeing him? But perhaps the most ridiculous bit of this is that, upon finding out this story about the doctor, instead of giving him a pat on the back and saying 'well sounds like you suffered at the hands of the aristocracy too matey boy, and good work on comforting and trying to save the poor peasant rape victim and endangering your live to try and reveal the truth, you truly are one of us and your head is safe where it it', they're like 'nar, we're going to kill your son in law and then come after you!'.
I know right! OK so it seems Charles is the son of one of the rapey brothers, but it also reveals he was like 2 when his daddy did all this, and his mother was totally mortified and tried to send money to the rape victims family (but her husband killed them all so that was a none starter) but they still think he should die cause his dad was a bad un.
Daddy doctor, and as it turns out genuinely sound guy, has to flee with his daughter and granddaughter cause the murderous peasants want to kill them all, and yes the daughter and little girl too, for no good reason, because it seems the peasants are just plain EVIL. Charles is left to get beheaded, which really is a bit unfair but I dunno, who cares the guy never says or does anything. Then, for reasons that just don't exist, a friend of theirs who was once described as looking like Charles, bribes his way into the prison and swaps places with him and gets beheaded instead. Everyone lives happily ever after unperturbed by their friend getting beheaded, and Charles goes back to his personality-less manikin existence in London. A super satisfactory ending.
I know right Mal, it makes not a fucking jot of sense. The whole thing is bizarre, confusing, and unrealistic. Dickens makes no allowances for being in Paris for half the book other than saying they are there, language barriers are barely mentioned, nor are any Parisian landmarks other than the jail. The French people are all, without exception, murderous madmen who dance crazy dances, get pissed, and chop off heads. I admit I know nothing about the French Revolution, but I'm inclined to believe this portrayal to easily border on xenophobic. Half the book is about saving Charles who is just a nothing character, and while it seems most people want to save him because they like his wife (which is a refreshing gender reversal) she is pretty vaguely just 'nice' to people. The whole thing walked a unsatisfactory zig zag between dull and weird, I have no idea why it is so well liked, other than maybe the inclusion of a bit of decapitation makes it a bit more gory than other Dickens books, where people mostly just die of a chill or being poor. Best selling novel of all time? Must have been a rubbish year for book releases...
Oh and the servant Charles goes to France to heroically rescue? It's mentioned once that he got out of prison long before Charles even comes to trial, and is never spoken or heard of again. Charles achieves nothing positive, and lets his mate get beheaded for his stupidity. Cool.
