David Copperfield (1850)

The first time I've read a book on the recommendation of a fictional character in another novel. The main character in Per Petterson's 'Out Stealing Horses' re-reads David Copperfield regularly and finds it inspiring for his approach to life. I hadn't read any Dickens since school days so when I saw it in a charity shop I thought 'why not?'. And I'm glad I did. A 700 odd page meander through the life of David Copperfield is known to be a heavily fictionalised and romanticised autobiographical novel by Dickens. What a pleasure it is to wade through the high Victorian mannered and florid language at such a leisurely pace. Characters sculptured rather than sketched so it's no wonder they have endured as much as those in Shakespeare. Great also to get a view of life in the mid 19th century. Pre-electronic and pre-motor car life was nevertheless full and varied. But with it a clue to the sytle of writing. Long and leisurely. How else to fill the evenings? ( )

This is a wonderful novel, in which David feels like a real person, unlike many of Dickens’ characters. As a reader, I sympathized with his painful childhood, the vicious characters he has to survive, his mistakes and what he learns from them. As he begins to mature, I felt, yes, he’s growing up, and he’ll be okay. The development of David, in association with so many extraordinary and memorable characters, lets you overlook the plot devices and improbable coincidences that Dickens uses to move the story in the direction he wants to take it. And what characters – among Dickens’ most inspired. (Is snake-like Uriah Heep really the inspiration for Harry Potter’s snaky enemies? Rowling seems to have a Dickens-like love of incident and odd characters.) And even though the trajectory is perfectly obvious, it remains satisfying because David is a character you’d like to know as a friend. After reading over 700 pages, it’s a bit sad to have it end. ( )

This reads like a memoir of David’s life starting with his birth. His life as an orphan, mistreated by his stepfather and eventually running away to his aunt who had wished he were a girl, his marriage to his child bride and eventual success as an author gives this book has a blending of fairy tale with bildungroman. The story compares punitive father figure Mr. Murdstone with the eccentric fun of Mr Micawber. There is elements of problems that surround class and gender mostly in the tale of Emily and Steerforth and Agnes and Uriah. My conclusion is “all’s well that ends well”. This book is the most autobiographical of Dicken’s works. This book was written in the usual serial method but also encompasses some of the newer, psychological realism and social details of the changing novelistic style. ( )

I'm not going to embarrass myself by trying to review this book.
I will simply say two things -
1. It definitely lived up to my expectations as a great book.
2. I can also see how someone could despise it.

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I've read this book a dozen times and still find something new. The first novel I really read inside and out. ( )