Oliver is born in a poorhouse, and his unmarried mother dies in childbirth. He’s raised in an orphanage with little food or warmth and no love. At the age of 10, he summons up the courage to ask for a second bowl of gruel and is labeled as an incorrigible. He’s apprenticed off to Mr. Sowerberry, an undertaker who thinks kindly of the boy. But his unpleasant wife and Noah Claypole, and older apprentice give Oliver no peace. He finally has enough and thrashes Noah, then takes off for London. On the way he meets John Dawkins, the Artful Dodger. The Dodger is a member of a pickpocket gang led by Fagin, a crafty Jew. Fagin takes one look at Oliver and decides to add him to his band, figuring Oliver’s innocent face will arouse no suspicion.

Oliver doesn’t realize he’s fallen in with a bad bunch until he goes out with the Dodger and Charley Bates, another thief. He sees them pick the pocket of a man at a book stall. When the man turns around, Oliver flees. He’s chased and caught. The police are about the throw him into jail when the bookseller arrives and proclaims Oliver’s innocence. The victim, Mr. Brownlow takes pity on Oliver, who is stricken with a fever from the experience, and takes him home. When Oliver is nursed back to health, Mr. Brownlow sends him on an errand. Fagin’s pupil, Nancy catches him and drags him back to Fagin’s house. Oliver is watched closely for several months, then sent with Bill Sikes, Fagin’s accomplice to rob a house in the country.

Oliver is forced to enter the house through a small window. He is about to rouse the inhabitants when a servant shoots him in the arm. Sikes drags him back through the window, but when the pursuers are getting close, Sikes leaves Oliver in a ditch. He makes his way to the house, collapsing on the doorstep. He’s recognized, but when he tells his story to Doctor Losberne and the ladies of the house, Mrs. Maylie and her neice Rose, they believe him. Again, he’s nursed back to health and lives with the family.

Here the story gets really confusing. Rose is courted by Harry Maylie, Mrs. Maylie’s son, but Rose thinks she was born out of wedlock and refuses to stain Harry’s name. A sinister man named Monks is seen wandering around the neighborhood. Nancy (who now lives with Bill Sikes) overhears a conversation between Monks and Fagin about Oliver and determines to something right in her life. She contacts Rose and Mr. Brownlow (who met because, in one of Dicken’s classic coincidences, Oliver recognized his old benefactor in the street one day) and tells them what she knows. When Sikes finds out, he murders Nancy and flees. He finally dies while trying to lower himself from a roof with a rope. Fagin is caught and hung. The Dodger is transported to Australia.

Oliver turns out to be the son of a deceased friend of Mr. Brownlow. This man was separated from his wife and son (Monks) and had an affair with Oliver’s mother. Oliver’s mother turns out to be Rose’s sister. Rose isn’t illegitimate and marries Harry. Monks splits what’s left of the inheritance with Oliver, then goes to America and kills himself with a life of dissipation. Oliver lives with Mr. Brownlow near the town where Harry becomes a parson.

This was one of the first Dickens’ novels I read. I remembered little of it except that I didn’t care for it much. I still don’t. It was one of Dickens’ early efforts, begun while he was still working on The Pickwick Papers. Dickens wrote it to draw attention to the Poor Law of 1824, which he disliked. The novel doesn’t have the complications of plot, the wealth of character or the fantastic atmosphere of his later works. Oliver is simply annoying. For some reason, he falls sick whenever he ends up with someone who can help him. And can someone explain where and when he learned to read? None of the other good characters have any life. The only well-drawn people are the bad guys, Fagin, Nancy, the Artful Dodger and Charley Bates. There seems to be a pretty strong dose of anti-Semitism throughout.

Still there were glimpses of Dickens’ genius here and there. I enjoyed this paragraph: “The doctor seemed especially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected and attempted in the nighttime; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact their business at noon, and to make an appointment, by post, a day or two previous.”