"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Friday, August 05, 2022

Nicholas Nickleby (Charles Dickens, 1838)


(831 pages) 

Written early in Dickens's career - shortly after Pickwick, Oliver.

Uncle Ralph Nickleby - venal, Scrooge-like

Title character's father dies of "broken heart" after wife-induced speculation ruins the family financially.

Nicholas - the title character- seems pretty prone to scuffles.

Cheeryble Bros as sort of a deus ex machina; they can fix things!

Newman Nogg - Ralph's assistant, does not share Ralph's meanness.

Schoolmaster - Squeers - keeps showing up.  Not nice.

Minor item - description of promoting a muffin company at beginning of book - pitch-perfect as to how it's still done.

Uncle Ralph Nickleby - great dialogue, lots of good lines.

Chesterton's idea about weakness of female leads (especially Kate).  Mother of Nicholas/Kate a garrulous ditz, I tended to skip passages whenever she started talking.

But overall the characters were entertaining per Dickens usual (meaning unusually good) capabilities.

Lots of characters, lots of plot threads, a lot to wrap up in the final pages.  He does it masterfully.

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