I cannot imagine what I would add to what has been written about this book. Suffice it to say that this tale of bravery and sacrifice in the French Revolution is one of the great novels of all time, by one of the great novelists, and it is a story that compels attention, rewards the mind, and thrills the heart. If you haven't read this, please do your self an enormous favor and read it. And if you haven't read any Dickens, I feel both sad and exceedingly glad for you, because you still have that unparalleled experience ahead of you. ( )

3.5

It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.

( )

"I know all, I know all," said the last comer. "Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?" (p. 69)

The father had long ago taken up his bundle and bidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball - when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course. (p. 70)

The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. (p. 139)

For, in these times, as the mender of roads worked, solitary, in the dust, not often troubling himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return, being for the most part too much occupied in thinking how little he had for supper and how much more he would eat if he had it - ... (p. 142)

"May I ask a question, Doctor Manette, before I go?"
"I think you may take that liberty," the Doctor answered, smiling.
"For gracious sake, don't talk about Liberty; we have quite enough of that," said Miss Pross. (p. 181)

The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death's dominion. (p. 197)

"Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned madame (Defarge); "but don't tell me." (p. 213)
( )

Charles Dickens is from a different literary era when writers spoke more directly and self-consciously to their readers, when descriptions—both literal and metaphorical—were more flowery, and when the English language was used differently from the way it is now. (Also, of course, a British reader might find Dickins language more penetrable than an American reader.) This is too bad, because Dickens is a greater storyteller than anyone writing novels, movies or television series today. (Considering the way most of Dickens’s stories were serialized in magazines, serialized television stories are probably the most apt analogy.) Because of the way he wrote serials, Dickens would even write himself into corners, which forced him to come up with successful and unsuccessful ways of writing himself out of them. In “A Tale of Two Cities,” there is a minor, yet ultimately pivotal character, who appears to have at least two seemingly different identities and his dual identity is later “discovered,” which is to say invented by the author to further the plot. Dickens’s brilliant storytelling probably gets him out of other corners that I am not aware of because he did it more successfully. (I am reminded of a story about the head writer of a television series who realized that he had painted himself into a corner; so he went for a long, long walk during which he came up with a rationale for the irrationality of his plot, basing it on the irrationality of human nature. I can see Dickens doing something like that. Also, knowing that the TV writer in question has read Dickens, I imagine that Dickens might take at least part credit for that writer’s capacity to see his way to this solution, because one thing that Dickens understood was the vicissitudes of the human heart and mind.)

Without spoiling anything, I must say that the confrontation between two women near the end of the novel is my favorite scene. Dickens understands that confrontation with the “Big Bad,” or most evil character in the story, must not only happen but must be monumental to be satisfying. The circumstances of the confrontation are remarkable on many points, not least that the author shifts the point of view back and forth between the two characters in the confrontation, something the neophyte writer should not attempt, but Dickens does it masterfully. Also, Dickens gives us both human and inhuman villains, for near the heart of this story is the Guillotine, which is personified as a character, a Grendel or Minotaur-like monster that requires blood sacrifice for its nourishment.

I will end this reaction to “A Tale of Two Cities” with a couple of non sequiturs. I stayed up into the wee hours to finish this book, and then I awoke from a dream about the novel wherein I dreamed that Dickens included modern technology such as telephones in his work. This, of course, is craziness. Dickens, who died in 1870, never saw the telephone, although he saw the telegraph. Aside from that, “A Tale of Two Cities” was a historical novel set nearly a century earlier. (While most of the novel is set in the 1780s and 1790s, some scenes recounted in a flashback are set in 1757, which is 102 years before the novel was published.)

Another thought has less to do with this novel and more to do with Dickens’s insight into human nature. I read a biography of General James H. Carleton, who did not always have military ambitions. As a youth he wanted to be a novelist, and so identified with Charles Dickens that he decided he must move to England. Naturally troubled by the fact that he did not know anyone there, he wrote a letter to Dickens in which he asked the great man to promise to be his friend should he go to England. Not only did Dickens reply, but he gave a thoughtful answer to Carleton’s request for a promise of friendship: What if we meet and find that we do not get along? Dickens asked. Then I would have to break my promise to you. Carlton decided not to move to England or to become a novelist, but he did save the letter. He did later publish books about his military exploits, and his son, Henry, realized his father’s literary ambitions by becoming a modestly successful Broadway playwright, although, none of his plays became classics. ( )

What I learned from this book: buy a new copy, because reading one that is in pieces is rather distracting. ( )