Customer Reviews

Our Mutual Friend (Oxford World's Classics)

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The works of Charles Dickens fell out of favor for the same reasons they were so much beloved: they are filled with treacly sentimentality and cartoonish characters. Yet, nobody tells a tale quite like this man can and man can this man tell a tale.
This book, with its many twists and turns; violence and death; subterfuge and espionage; lies and deceit; conspiracies and skullduggery; causes one to wish that Mr. Dickens had tried his hand at murder mystery, for this book has all the elements necessary for a pot boiler in that vein.
Yet, this tale as it twists and tangles around the repercussions of a mysterious death, and disappearance of an orphan returned to Merry Old England for to claim his inheritance is really about love, requited and unrequited; loyalty and trust; and friendship and honor.
None of these things come easy in a Dickens novel so it takes some 700 pages for us to discover how all will end. In between time the reader is treated to a page turner inhabited by all manner of creatur each in his own way utterly fascinating or entertaining, and whose parts in this play cause one to stay up reading late in the night from sheer entertainment and a desire to find out what happens next.
Interestingly and thankfully Dickens doesn't turn saccharine until about 4/5's into the book and one is struck by how modern the novel is up to that point. Although one wishes it didn't the book, being by Dickens, inevitably takes a maudlin turn as the tale winds to a close. All is forgiven though for the simple fact that the story is just so darned good that this is a small price to pay for such a great ride.
Suffice it to say that nearly all of the myriad ends that come dangling down in the course of the story get tied, and one closes the book feeling replete.

The novel is easily readable. It reveals a great deal about English society in the mid-19th Century in and around London.

The novel, by Charles Dickens, reveals a society in early industrialized Briain strugling to meet its Christian and economic responsabilities to the poor, as well as to the 'class assumptions' of a traditionally, and rigidly class-based society.

It deals with the challenges of moral and good people, as well as the 'not so' good and 'not so' moral people, at every station of society, attempting to deal with issues bigotry, poverty, agedness, classism, greed, and sexism.

It has many 'Dickenson-type' off-beat characters that challenge one's patience and touch the heart. It is a great read for anyone.

It has great potential for skilled English teachers at the upper high school levels and incoming freshmen in College, and certainly Graduate school, with the proper critical models for discussion.

It is a long novel, but well worth the money for purchase and the time involved in reading it.