David Copperfield

UPDATE, two months later: I tried again and finished it. Thank goodness that’s over. It was tiresome, heavyhanded; the dialog blathery and often unreadable. The only reason I kept at it was to better read and understand Demon Copperhead, so I ended up just skimming the second half. It often helped to fantasize about Copperfield stabbing a rusty knife in this-or-that evil person’s throat and watching them slowly drown in their own blood. The hope that “next page he’ll do it, for sure!” kept me going more than once.

Ten years separate this from [book:A Tale of Two Cities|1953] and it really shows: although this one shows hints of Dickens’s compassion and sense of justice, he grew up a lot in that time.

Now I eagerly go forward to Kingsolver!