Book Review: Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (three stars)
“There are shades in all good pictures, but there are lights too, if we choose to contemplate them.”
A formative Dickens work. The progenitors of many characters Dickens would employee in A Christmas Carol in five years are found here, with a cameo by Jane Austen’s Mrs. Bennet (Pride and Prejudice).
[Redacted] was quite lazy enough (and sufficiently vain and frivolous withal) to have been a fine lady; and it was only the arbitrary distinctions of rank and station which prevented her from being one.
Episodic in every sense of the word. Written to appear in weekly installments. Apparently Dickens was paid by the word or column-inch because several subplots do not relate to the main plot. On the other hand, typical of Dickens, several minor characters are revealed to be major before the denouement.
“Coom awa’, coom awa’. In wi ’un, doon beside the fire; tak’ a soop o’ thot. Dinnot say a word till thou’st droonk it a’! Oop wi’ it, mun. Ding! but I’m reeght glod to see thee.”
Not one of Dickens’s best. Repetitive, rambling exposition. Coincidences abound. His rendering of Yorkshire dialect becomes tiresome. He was still learning his trade.
“Why, I don’t believe now, that there’s such a place in all the world for coincidences as London is!”
As a Matter of Fancy 