I second Charles Dickens. I am absolutely fascinated with the myriad of characters he brings into his works. His books usually have not just one or two characters that you fall in love with, but often three or four. I always have to read the book again a second time before getting a good grasp on who is who. I think his stories capture humanity at it's best and worst. You can always find yourself in one of the characters, find your annoying uncle, your holier than thou neighbor, your corrupt politician and your brother that you live in constant self-denial of.

I love Mr. Panks in Little Dorrit, an aggressive rent-collector but a darling and a good man at heart.

I love Mrs Micawber, (David Copperfield) who shall never desert her looser husband who is always in debt,

The poor souls in "Hard Times" who struggle in eighteenth century controversial, industrial London thriving at the expense of the poor.

Oliver Twist is raw and real and does not sugarcoat the reality of many children caught up in abandonment and trying to survive on the harsh streets of any modern country.

The Old Curiosity Shop captures the greed and self-delusion of gambling and the cost of gambling to those one loves.

Everywhere in Dickens's work these angles of his absolute opinion stood up out of the confusion of his general kindness, just as sharp and splintered
peaks stand up out of the soft confusion of the forests. Dickens is always generous, he is generally kind-hearted, he is often sentimental, he is sometimes intolerably maudlin; but you never know when you will not come upon one of the convictions of Dickens; and when you do come upon it you do know it. It is as hard and as high as any precipice or peak of the mountains. The highest and hardest of these peaks is Hard Times.
Source(s):
http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/hardtimes/


Permalink | Report