Reviews for The Old Curiosity Shop
Review - Old Curiosity Shop, The
The main character, Nell, is dull as cardboard, but the other characters are fun.
Reviewed by Roger on 1998-11-16 08:47:57
The Old Curiosity Shopby Charles Dickens | |
| List(s): | "Carp 500" |
|---|---|
| Category: |
"Fiction - General" |
| Pages: | 680 |
| Year of Publication: | 1841 |
| Date Read: | 11/14/1998 |
| Notes: | A novel of sharp contrasts: of life and death, youth and age, desire and innocence, humour and villainy. For the character of Little Nell, the beautiful child thrown into a shadowy, terrifying world, Dickens drew on a tragedy in his own life, the death at the age of seventeen of his sister-in-law Mary Hogarth. The sorrows of Nell and her grandfather are offset by Dickens's creation of a dazzling contemporary world inhabited by some of his most brilliantly drawn characters — the eloquent ne'er-do-well Dick Swiveller; the hungry maid known as the 'Marchioness'; the mannish lawyer Sally Brass; Quilp's brow-beaten mother-in-law, and Quilp himself, the lustful, vengeful dwarf, whose demonic energy makes a vivid counterpoint to Nell's purity. |
| My Rating: | 7 |