A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

London and Paris, two sharply contrasting cities, provide the stages upon which Dickens' epic historical drama is played out. Set before and during the French Revolution, the tale tracks the lives of a select group of characters affected by the intense social and political upheaval of the age. Doctor Manette, an injustly imprisoned inmate of the Bastille is released after eighteen years to be reunited with his estranged daughter, Lucie, in London. Lucie later marries Charles Darnay, exiled nephew of the Parisian aristocrat responsible for her father's incarceration. Another young man, Sydney Carton, is a talented but dissipated English lawyer also in love with the doctor's daughter. Back in France, tensions among the peasantry grow high as food and living conditions run low. In a humble wine shop of St Antoine, the mysterious Madame Defarge weaves the names of their oppressors into her knitting...

Thus marks the premise of what is probably Dickens' most humourless and bloodthirsty novel. Compared to his less political works, I found A Tale of Two Cities relatively hard going at first, particularly as the narrative tends to jump back and forth between the cities and also across long periods of time. Aside from Carton, none of the characters display much depth or complexity, acting instead as stock vessels through which the story can unfold. Dickens attempts to weave together the intimate lives of his fictional cast with the more sprawling circumstances engulfing late 18th Century France. The result is relatively successful but I would have preferred the historical elements to serve more as a backdrop to the story. Major events such as the storming of the Bastille, the Great Fear, the September Massacres, the Law of Suspects etc. all find their way into the text as axles upon which the plot turns. Although heavily melodramatic and exaggerated, the book does perform an excellent job illustrating the horror of the Revolution.

When the uprising breaks out midway through the novel, the protagonists are lured back to Paris against their better judgement only to be embroiled in the conflict. There are some highly memorable scenes of mob brutality as wave after wave of prisoners are executed, although much of this violence is implied in the imagery. The obvious symbolism of red wine is oft repeated throughout, a favourite early scene being the starving crowd's frenzied attack on a barrel of spilled wine in the street, brazenly foreshadowing the massacres to come. Another enjoyable chapter is the one detailing a day in the life of the vicious Monsieur the Marquis; after accidentally killing a child beneath his speeding carriage he returns home to his country estate to abuse his serfs and spout out a venemous diatribe on the necessity of suffering. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what you call swagger. Whilst not my favourite of Dickens' novels, A Tale of Two Cities is worth a read if you're into semi-historical fiction.

Rating: 3/5