David Copperfield (1850)

Mr. Dick and Aunt Betsey are the coolest people this side of Robert and Clara Schumann!

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Uriah Heep needs to be enrolled in an emergency self-esteem course.

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Pain comes to all, yes, even to Steerforth.

Reading Dickens in publication order, this novel has the best first two hundred pages yet. Aided by Dickens' proficient use of first-person perspective, David is entirely sympathetic as a child. It's the best grasp of childhood I've read since Joyce's Portrait while David suffers awfully under the Murdstones' tyranny, and Aunt Betsey is my favourite Dickens character yet. Up to this point I was readying this novel's praises.

But then ... the novel inexplicably turns away from David and he is merely witness to various drama. There's a good assortment of the usual wonderful characters here that Dickens can always muster: Pegotty and her brother are earthy and loving; Mr. Dick is a hoot; Uriah is plenty conniving, albeit not the nastiest villain Dickens has shown me (that's still Pecksniff); Emily and Agnes are only dull angels but Rosa Dartle is under a darker cast, tremendous in her vindictiveness but justified in her heart. Even so, it wasn't enough to make this portion of the story interesting, while David remained a non-player and the novel transmitted no sense of direction.

But then ... David stands up to a villain, finds romance, and the novel blooms once more. Its momentum is again largely driven by his actions and choices, and from there to the end I enjoyed all the rest. It has a neat and tidy ending that's full of charm, if unlikely in some details, and it all concludes on a high note. If only it weren't for that middle portion. ( )

Written in 1850, Dickens' 16th major work, and 8th novel, is a solid four-star work. Combining the picaresque bildungsroman from Dickens' early period with the more complex character studies he was becoming known for, it's perhaps his best book to this point. Perhaps because parts of the novel are autobiographical, David starts to feel a bit real in a sense that perhaps no other character in his canon had perhaps yet reached. There's a wonderful array of supporting characters and a real sense of forward movement and thematic unity. I'm ultimately more in tune with Dickens' last works, but David Copperfield is another rung on Dickens' ladder to immortality. He's not a Tolstoy or a Flaubert, and we shouldn't expect him to be. He treats character more as something to be chronicled than to be dissected. Nevertheless, there are many great, detailed little moments in David's life, and the world around him, that suggest the continuous development of this great author. ( )

I finished this book today with a sigh of relief. I love Dickens's novels usually, which kept me going, but I found this one a chore: hellishly long (837 pages of small print), a superfluity of characters and caricatures, all of whom are afflicted with verbal diarrhoea; and burdened with a plodding narrative and a colourless central character. Much of the dialogue was mawkish, even by this author's standards. For hardened Dickens fans only. ( )

A really sweet funny book. Although I didn't like David's attitude toward his first wife. He becomes kind of a dick. ( )