Our Mutual Friend

Dickens at his most wonderful and at his most dreadful. The good bits of this book are a very strong reminder of why we should read Dickens and keep on re-reading him at every opportunity; the bad bits help to explain why many of us don't do that. We get some of his most vivid, unexpected sketches of characters and settings, especially the famous characterization of the River Thames that gives the book a kind of Wagnerian Leitmotif. In Headstone we have one of the most striking descriptions of hate and obsession anywhere, the hapless Wegg is a brilliant description of small-minded envy, and the sensitive way Dickens treats his "minority" characters (a mentally-handicapped person, one with a physical disability, an alcoholic, and a Jew) show more is completely different from what you expect from the mid-Victorian period. Despite the length of the book, one of its most striking features is the economy with which Dickens handles the scene changes. The Veneerings and their friends, who provide a Greek chorus commenting on the action at critical points, would dominate the story if it had been written by Trollope or Thackeray; Dickens barely pencils them in, but we still feel as though we know them all intimately.
On the other hand, there is one of the silliest and least plausible plot devices in the whole canon of Victorian fiction, we get two "good deaths" so sentimental they will make you feel physically sick, and there are a couple of father-daughter relationships that are almost as bad. Members of the teaching profession might also be forgiven for feeling a bit hard done by: apparently Dickens had not said all the nasty things he wanted to about education in David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and Hard Times, so he thought of a few more for this book... show less

Dickens doesn't get any better than this. The heroines are complex and engaging, and he has *so* much to say about the state of his corrupt society. It's really more about money than anything else. Not a single character (from Lizzie, who'd prefer not to think about money, to Bella the "mercenary little wretch", to Charley, the ACTUAL mercenary wretch, to Mr. Boffin and Mr. Wegg and the Lammles) doesn't benefit from the (mis)fortunes of anyone else, which is sort of universally true.

Anyway, it's a brilliant piece of work, and just about the best Dickens ever wrote.

In this novel Dickens appears to tackle virtually everything he ever attacked before: education, law and lawyers, debtor's prison, elections, high society, etc. The reason is that his primary topic this time is money, which touches on and lies behind everything else. Here we see the struggling desperation of the poor, the ridiculous rich with their curious motives, and the challenge of finding anyone with good morals at either end of the scale with all of them so focused upon this one thing, whether by necessity, greed or simple obliviousness to the importance of anything else. Dickens portrays the lengths men must go to for acquiring it or to sustain themselves, dwelling especially on the grim or dirty. He starts this novel with a man show more pursuing what might have been the worst 'job' anyone in London at the time could have. We also see a taxidermist's shop of horrors, dealers in 'dust' (garbage/recycling, I take it?), and other lines of work that expose the 'glory' of what's profitable.

It's not a very fun novel, compared to most Dickens. There are likeable characters here but they are fewer and farther between, the rest being placed under microscope for a study of their faults. We see the grudging of others' good fortune and its close attendance by suspect charities; another association of Judaism with usury (not so bad as Oliver Twist, but not so good either) and its fashioning as a front for a young man on the path to miserliness. We see petty justifications for theft, the underhanded negotiations that take advantage of generous natures, a young lady's determination to marry into wealth, the best healthcare money can buy (as compared with the least or none, a plight of the poor), and how having too much wealth can start to change you for the worse (echoes of Great Expectations here).

In terms of complexity, the plot interweaving is enough to rival Bleak House or anything else Dickens wrote, and he does his usual fine job of balancing his coverage of each element. I'm only sorry there weren't all that many threads I cared returning to, as many of them were quite dark. The characteristic humour is still there, popping up as a welcome and pleasant surprise, but sometimes it has an edge to it. Wegg is a miserable man to read about except when he's being foolish, the high society circle is chock full of snobs with only one sympathetic character in their midst to leaven them, and Eugene troubled me all the way to the end. Lizzie is too much of Dickens' usual pattern for angelic waifs, but Bella is a pleasure to know and I'm sorry she aspires to be a 1950s housewife. Jenny Wren is the most impressive female in the novel; can she really be only twelve?

The ending was mostly a series of disappointments for me: the Boffin betrayal of the reader's confidence is far worse than Martin Chuzzlewit's. Eugene's ending is totally undeserved and unearned, I suppose the moral being you give a scoffing womanizer a strong whack in the head and suddenly he's devoted husband material? And I'm even made to feel bad for Wegg, who only wanted a cut of what he supposed was another miscreant's spoils, but still it's not terrible. I like how all the moving pieces fit together and the strong theme that's as relevant as ever. There's clear potential for a modern adaptation to do this story justice. show less

Ah, I think I've had too much of the 18th Century voice for a while...

I really read mostly non-fiction, but am occasionally drawn to Dickens out of some sense of Great Books obligation...

I admire the scope and intricacy of this noir-ish caper epic packed with more characters than an Avengers flick.

So, it ends up, I walk away from another Dickens with three appreciations: great plot (love the body-double impersonation theme), a great character name, and a great quirky character.

This time, my fave name is that of "Fascination Fledgeby" (owns Mr Riah's moneylending business and is greedy and corrupt and makes nearly marries Georgiana Podsnap to gain access to her money).

My favorite character is Silas Wegg, the ballad-seller with a wooden show more leg; a "social parasite" hired to read despite not being entirely literate himself and raises his scheming to blackmail. A close second is Jenny Wren "the dolls' dressmaker." show less

Meera Syal’s narration of this work, complete with a unique voice for each character, is the best performance I’ve heard on Audible and what a story!

As Dickens writes in an afterword, there are two major plot twists in this novel (John Rockville is the heir John Hanford and the Boffins were in on the secret all along), one of which is deliberately telegraphed to the reader very early on and the other completely disguised until the very end of the novel. The final twist is worthy of the Dallas reunion movie where it turns out that J.R. merely shot the mirror in the original series finale inspired by A Christmas Carol.

And along the way, we see Dickens at his most masterful in creating unforgettable characters and dialogue, skewering show more society, advocating for the poor and writing some of the finest landscape/riverscape descriptions I have ever had the pleasure to read. This is one of those books the reader savors. I found myself worrying that some particularly wonderful passages were not bound to be bound to my memory.

If pressed for what I liked best, I would have to say the characters and the dialogue: Ms. Jenny Wren, the dressmaker of children’s dolls, the Veneerings, Podsnaps and Miss Tiffen, dinner hosts and guests from hell, Betty Hidgins, a poor woman destined to die on the road, Mrs.Wilfer, who wants nothing more than to rise above her station, Mr. Venus the taxidermist and the unparalleled band of villains—Bradley Headstone, the stalking, murderous schoolmaster, the Lammles, the fortune hunters mutually deceived into marriage, Rodger Ridinghood a river rogue, and Fascinating Fledgby, the indolent “gentleman” looking for a scam and hiding his money-lending business behind the kindly Jew, Mr. Riah, and Charley Hexam, a poor boy with brains and ambition.

These characters are all much more interesting with richer lives, stories, dialogue, than the main characters driving the plot. With Dickens, the plot is just the structure around which the best parts of the novel are strung.

This could be the best Dickens I’ve ever read although Great Expectations will always hold a special place for me. I see that it often ranks among Dickens’ most beloved works, the other one that is frequently mentioned being Bleak House. It’s been at least thirty years since I last visited Bleak House and this experience tells me it’s time for a revisit. show less

Oh Dickens, I’ve missed you! I used to read one Dickens novel each year, but it’s been four years since I last picked up a new one of his tomes. It took me a minute to get into the novel, but once I got to know the characters I was completely hooked.

Dickens creates stories with a huge cast of supporting characters and half a dozen overlapping plots. His work was originally serialized, so imagine watching a complicated television drama. Each week there’s new twists and turns, but rarely are things resolved or revealed until those final chapters. His work is the same. You spend the first third of the book just trying to keep everyone straight and it was slow-going for a bit.

This novel, more than his others, starts off with an show more incredibly gripping scene. Lizzie and her father are rowing around the River Thames looking for dead bodies. They find a drowned man named John Harmon who is the heir to his grandfather’s fortune. From that moment on things become much more complicated.

There are the Boffins, an older couple that inherits the money when Harmon is declared dead. Then we meet Bella, the young lady who was destined to marry Harmon, even though they had never met. There’s a little crippled woman named Jenny Wren who makes clothes for dolls and a shady man named Silas Wegg with a wooden leg and a pile of schemes to get his hands on the inheritance.

SPOILERS
When John Rokesmith’s true identity was revealed I was so surprised! What an impossible situation to find yourself believed to be dead and then to realize that the woman you were supposed to marry didn't want to marry you. Then to fall in love with her without meaning to, even though you know she won’t love you because you’re “poor” now. If you tell her who you are she’ll marry you, but she won’t love you. Or you can walk away and lose your love forever.

The scene where Mr. Boffin tells him off and humiliates Bella was such a great one. I loved that they fell in love and he knew that she truly loved him and not his money. At the same time, I couldn’t believe he took so long to tell her who he was. I understand that she had seen something nasty in herself that scared her, but at some point you have to be honest with your spouse. I loved watching her transformation. She was such a frivolous creature and she found out what was really important to her when it was almost taken away.

A Few Highlights:
- The friendship between Lizzy and Bella, I love that relationship.
- I was so glad the Boffins were in on it and that he hadn't really turned miserly.
- The sweet scene towards the end with Sloppy and Jenny Wren was just the best.
- How perfect that the novel comes full circle for Lizzie. In the beginning she finds the dead body in the river and at the end she saves Eugene by pulling him from the river. No one does a full circle like Dickens!
- The schoolmaster was such a creepy stalker. That whole love story was sad an twisted. Eugene is so selfish and oblivious, Lizzie so hopeless, and Bradley is just aggressive and awful.
SPOILERS OVER

BOTTOM LINE: In Our Mutual Friend Dickens explores social classes, the dangers of greed, a twisted love triangle, and so much more. It was definitely one of my favorites of his books. This was his final completed novel, but I still have quite a few left to read. I’m sure I’ll pick a new one next year when the weather turns cold. There’s something about the first snow that always makes me want to curl up with his work.

"There's no royal road to learning and what is life but learning." show less

"There's ever so many people in the river" - Bob Gliddery

A majestic, dark, swirling novel, this. I'm not quite sure it's a Dickensian masterpiece on the level of Great Expectations or Bleak House, nor perhaps is it as dear to my heart as Little Dorrit. Nevertheless, it slots nicely into fourth place for me. Dickens' last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend is a thematically unified treatise on money, death, transformation, and the ways in which humans can never truly know one another. As expected, the novel bursts with memorable characters: the lowlife Rogue Riderhood, the even worse Silas Wegg and his Decline and Fall of the Rooshan Roman Empire, the giddy Boffins and the scheming Lammles, the doll's dressmaker Jenny Wren and the show more determined septuagenarian Betty Higden, the tormented Bradley Headstone and the great, interminable Mrs. Wilfer. They are all characters at the service of two richly symbolic legacies: the death of John Harmon, Sr, and his fortune founded (quite literally) on piles of dust, and that of Gaffer Hexam, the "waterside character", fisher of dead bodies from the Thames, whose life and death on that swirling, copper river seems to embody Dickens' thoughts on life, regardless of one's "station".

Being a Dickens acolyte sometimes means accepting that his main characters are going to endure external transformations, not internal ones. No shades of Tolstoy here, thankyou very much. And while John Rokesmith is little more than a tormented plaything of the fates, we at least get some satisfying development in the determined, put-upon Lizzie Hexam, the gruff and sometimes pseudo-villainous Eugene Wrayburn, and that devastating creature, the mercenary Bella Wilfer. Readers' tolerance will vary as to how convincing any of the character's transformations are, and the practice of publishing the novel in 20 serialised parts of the same length means that sometimes one feels like Dickens has cut short important moments, while other character moments seem to go on for a few too many pages.

Nevertheless, there's little to complain about here. Like most artists in their old age, Dickens' work is a lot richer here than in the early novels like Nicholas Nickleby although at the same time, his situations have lost some of their carefree pizzazz and even his grotesques are - in order to be more shaded-in - less outright comical. But CD's tongue remains firmly lodged in his cheek here, particularly in his dealings with the Lammles and Mr. Wilfer's thoughts on his home life. The symbolism at play in this book, exemplified by those mounds of dust on which fortunes depend, are particularly interesting given that, just months after the book was completed, Britain would face a financial scandal that would bring down many. Best of all, Dickens' descriptive powers have never been better. The night walks of Wrayburn, and Headstone, and Riderhood along the country river compete with a sequence of death and resurrection in a low-end pub, a children's hospital of great sorrow and compassion, the "bran' new" dinner parties of the Veneerings, and - most unforgettable of all - the darkened rooms of London's most prolific and talented anatomist (to judge from his own opinions), Mr. Venus. As the smile on Venus' alligator seems to say, "All of this was quite familiar knowledge down in the depths of the slime, ages ago."

Delightful, although I don't think I'd recommend it to newcomers to Dickens. It's a more rarefied example of his work that probably tastes better once the palate has grown accustomed. show less