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A review by blueyorkie
Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens
4.0
I discovered the work of Charles Dickens quite late, in adulthood, and it took me several years to let myself be entirely caught in the net of its charms. However, today, having read many of his novels, I consider him a brilliant storyteller with a singular verb, and I am determined to read his fictional work in its entirety.
"Dombey and Son" is not Charles Dickens's best-known novel; it is far from it. However, its thousand pages contain a lovely family and social fiction that his contemporary Victor Hugo will doubtless not have disdained. All the ingredients make a Dickensian novel an extraordinary universe of shattered destinies and colorful figures.
A novel of vanity and ambition, "Dombey & Son" denounces the greed of the heart, the pretension of class, the manipulation of beings, and the harshness of a society that does not spare those in need. With unique humor, Charles Dickens deploys this talent that belongs only to him to give life to a massive gallery of characters to eat in both senses.
I don't know of any other period author capable of featuring many leading and supporting characters, nimbly interlocking them with each other, and giving them a personality of their own, endearing or repulsive. Likewise, each actor in this beautiful drama searched and worked in-depth until he offered the reader the best of his qualities or faults. The result is such a closeness to the ordinary heroes and heroines of the novel that we, the readers, feel ourselves becoming one of them.
Charles Dickens did not in any way usurp his status as a beloved author of the English Language, and I am one of his great admirers.
"Dombey and Son" is not Charles Dickens's best-known novel; it is far from it. However, its thousand pages contain a lovely family and social fiction that his contemporary Victor Hugo will doubtless not have disdained. All the ingredients make a Dickensian novel an extraordinary universe of shattered destinies and colorful figures.
A novel of vanity and ambition, "Dombey & Son" denounces the greed of the heart, the pretension of class, the manipulation of beings, and the harshness of a society that does not spare those in need. With unique humor, Charles Dickens deploys this talent that belongs only to him to give life to a massive gallery of characters to eat in both senses.
I don't know of any other period author capable of featuring many leading and supporting characters, nimbly interlocking them with each other, and giving them a personality of their own, endearing or repulsive. Likewise, each actor in this beautiful drama searched and worked in-depth until he offered the reader the best of his qualities or faults. The result is such a closeness to the ordinary heroes and heroines of the novel that we, the readers, feel ourselves becoming one of them.
Charles Dickens did not in any way usurp his status as a beloved author of the English Language, and I am one of his great admirers.