One of the most powerful novels of Charles Dickens, this masterpiece is all too often over-looked. A review of the book.

Barnaby Rudge

By Charles Dickens

„¦Review by Tom Ogren

A while ago I was reading a remarkably interesting book on fishing the Pacific Coast and I happened on something about the Bull Trout, also called the Dolly Varden Trout. Iˇ¦ve never caught one of these handsome fish since theyˇ¦re denizens of far off cold Canadian waters, but Iˇ¦ve certainly always wanted to. The author of this book of angling delights mentioned that whoever it was who had named the Dolly Varden, he must have been a fisherman of uncommonly fine literary tastes, for the trout had been given the name of a beautiful girl in the novel, Baraby Rudge, by Charles Dickens.
I called up my Mom, who is an actual Jeopardy! Champion and no doubt the best read person I know, and asked her about the book. She not only had a copy of Barnaby Rudge but had read it too. ˇ§Very interesting book,ˇ¨ she told me.
Talk about understatement!
I should confess now that although Iˇ¦m surely the oldest Ennui writer aboard, I had never actually read any Dickens at all. Oh, Iˇ¦d seen some of his work on TV but I hadnˇ¦t actually read any. But propelled by my interest in this pink-spotted, blue-green , cold-water trout, I decided to take the plunge.
I love a good novel but since I write them myself I always find myself taking notes on style, substance, plot and characterization when I read one. Three pages into Barnaby Rudge I started to think that there was a reason I hadnˇ¦t read much less finished any of Charlesˇ¦s novels. Too slow, too wordy, too much description, too much inner thought, too little action, too old. But by page twelve I set the book down and took a deep breath. A beautiful young girl, nineteen years old, a toddler in tow and a baby at the breast, had just been hung by her neck for shoplifting a bolt of cloth and it was so real, so stark, so surprising that I could hardly breathe.
Okay, I said to myself, sure, thereˇ¦s a damn good reason Charles Dickens is considered a master. This fellow could write.
I never looked back after that.
It is not my point in the least in this review to lay out the plot of Barnaby Rudge or to write something that might perchance help some student wishing to appear on paper to have read the book. No, my point if I have one, and I think that I do, is to spread the word to you, the select, the way-above-average reader who chances upon this review, to treat yourself to Barnaby Rudge.
In dozens of ways big and small Dickens does things here that few other authors ever pull off much less attempt. He writes, it feels, exactly as he thinks, leaving out nothing, attacking his subject from every conceivable direction. In this large book, some 700+ pages, many plots evolve, ever-deepening. The pace of the writing is unusual for he continually lulls the reader into a pleasant comfort zone and then slaps you hard, suddenly wide-awake.
Every single character in the novel is whole, distinct, and different. Dickens breaks one fiction ˇ§ruleˇ¨ after another with total ease. One of the most evil people in the book is an old, feeble blind man. One and all describe the very hero of the book, Barnaby Rudge himself, as, ˇ§an idiot,ˇ¨ although today weˇ¦d say he was retarded.
Dickens also creates what any really great writer does, characters we soon hate, and those that we learn to love. Tragedy is everywhere in this wild yarn set in London in the 1780ˇ¦s. The Gordon Riots are flourishing, Protestants are rioting and burning Catholic churches, farms, and houses. Hangings are as common here as sparrows and like clockwork, every six weeks, another ragtag group of smugglers, pickpockets, murderers and shoplifters goes to the gallows to be ˇ§worked off.ˇ¨
The good citizens admire the law and order and even more so the great hanging show itself. The hanging of poor people is so interwoven throughout this magnificent book that when Dickens wrote it in the 1840ˇ¦s, serialized first in the newspapers, it must have provided quite an impetus to the rethinking of capital punishment itself.
But Barnaby Rudge is much more than a book about death, intolerance, and inequality of the classes, for it too is a marvelous love story, several loves stories actually. Here love knows no boundaries, love endures deceit, stupidity, greed, and yes, love even defeats fate. If a good novel is like a rich and savory soup, then Barnaby Rudge is a first class gumbo, for this feast has a bit of everything, and each ingredient in precisely the right amount.