A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Wow. After reading several fluff books in a row, A Tale of Two Cities was a striking contrast. It's easy to see why it has endured the centuries, while the lighter reads will soon be on the bargain table at Barnes and Noble.

The beginning is a little hard to get through, but just because Dickens does a lot of set-up. It is so worth it though. Things start to click one by one...characters I completely forgot about suddenly come back into prominence; seemingly unrelated events become very much entwined; and he does it all in such a way that I felt like I was making each discovery.

Madame Dafarge is one of the most subtle villains in all literature...quietly knitting while her extreme bitterness eats away at her soul making her truly evil. She really is very scary. (And I thought it was so interesting and unexpected for a novel written in 1859 to have a woman be the mastermind behind so much darkness.)

So, all that being said, I still might have just settled on four stars rather than five, but the ending was so completely perfect that I HAD to give the book five stars. Really, I can't think of a single thing I would have changed. And just for Dickens to have thought it up in the first place...true genius. He is so good.

This review was written before the birth of this blog.