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Loading... Old Curiosity Shopby Charles Dickens
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Outstanding performances and setting, but the girl playing Nell was weak, and abridging the story high-lighted Dickens' emotional manipulations. Tom Courtenay as Quilp was superb, and Peter Ustinov as the Grandfather totally captured the tormented but inescapable anguish of the gambling-addicted old man. (  ) librisissimo | Nov 3, 2009 |  An early (his fourth) novel of Dickens written in 1840 - 41. He starts with a narrator, but drops the device in Chapter 4 – one of the perils of writing in published instalments. It reminds me of OUR MUTUAL FRIEND – with the poor innocents being pure white, and the evil villains being so dark it is ludicrous. The chief villain in this piece, Quilp, is so impossibly bad that it is laughable. Oscar Wilde said: 'One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears...of laughter.' This book doesn’t contribute much to Dickens lasting fame. Read November 2008 (  ) mbmackay | Aug 30, 2009 | Dickens story of contrasts: youth and old age, beauty and deformity, freedom and restraint. antimuzak | Jun 24, 2009 | gwyneira | Jun 14, 2009 | This was assigned reading for a book club. It has been a long time since I read Dickens. It won't be that long again. When placed alongside some of the other books I have read lately, this book shines. It is, of course, long and wordy. But what beautiful prose is found within those words. You will be reading along and be grabbed by a paragraph that is so absolutely perfect. The characters are so well drawn. The people are what keeps you going through some words and situations that are so foreign to us in our time. Most readers just won't put in the time and effort but for those who are willing the reward is great. (  ) shaunnas | Feb 12, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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Nell is on her way home to the dusty shop where she and her grandfather live a rather mysterious life. The old man disappears every night--visiting gambling dens with the naive hope of winning a fortune. Instead he sinks deeper and deeper into debt. Enter Daniel Quilp, moneylender, who becomes furious upon learning that the grandfather is a pauper and will never be able to repay his tremendous debt. Quilp seizes the curiosity shop and begins making lecherous overtures to Nell, so she and her grandfather steal away one morning to seek their fortunes elsewhere. But the demonic dwarf is never far behind.
Sound effects are employed judiciously and serve mainly as a springboard for the listener's imagination. The sound of a crying baby is enough to convey the image of crowded lodgings and genteel Victorian poverty, while raucous laughter and high-pitched squawks evoke the barely controlled chaos of an outdoor Punch and Judy show. The dramatization pares Dickens's weighty novel down to two and one-half hours, but does so skillfully, retaining Dickens's wit, marvelous dialogue, and delightful characterizations. (Running time: 155 minutes, 2 cassettes) --Elizabeth Laskey
(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:41:09 -0500)
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