Rereading Review: "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens

It's been a long time since I first read A Tale of Two Cities and honestly, I just wanted to reread some Dickens this year, but I'm being choosy about it. I started with one I didn't like too much the first time I read it, Martin Chuzzlewit and thus, I wanted to read one that was perhaps in my top five favourite Dickens novels of all time: A Tale of Two Cities. This book is probably only second to Bleak House for me and even those two novels change places in the top two depending on how I'm feeling. Though I have to say, Bleak House is one of those books where the language is so beautiful that you could literally start to cry for no reason - just awe. Some of the words could give you Stendhal syndrome.

So far, in my rereading I have reread Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen, and now I reread A Tale of Two Cities also by Charles Dickens. There seems to be a theme here but I'll see what I want to reread next.

I love the backdrop of this story, it's the years leading up to the French Revolution and we get to see a lot of the Bastille before it got taken down by the people of France. From the very first passage of “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” we are thrust into a world of contradictions and upheavals. This is very important considering we also have two people in this story who look exactly the same. Possibly one of Dickens' best works, yet overlooked by so many, this story has a clever interweaving of character storylines yes, but it also has an incredible historical context to it which was to Dickens if we were today, write a novel with the backdrop of the Vietnam War or the Second World War. As the political instability grows, so does the conflict of the novel.

Lucie is devoted to her father who was once a respected scientist. Her father, Dr Mannette, is released from the Bastille as a broken man, having specified that he is a shoemaker, his daughter wants to devote her life to making his new one a little bit easier. The relationship Dr Manette has with his daughter is extra special in this book and it is beautiful. More than often, we can see characters stand to respect that. The characters I'm talking about here are the recently aquitted Charles Darnay and the lawyer's assistant Sydney Carton. These two men are said to resemble each other so much that it is often uncanny.

Again, this is Charles Dickens doing what Dickens does best, he plays with the idea of possibility that perhaps the crime that Darnay is accused of is actually Carton. But then again, maybe Darnay isn't Darnay at all - maybe he is actually someone else and did actually do what he is being accused of. There's a lot to unpack if you were going to go about reading this for the first time. You want to pay careful attention to the things Darnay says and does. He is by no means a bad guy, but he is important.

I remember the first time I read this book and the ending just made me sob. It was worthy of a good cry and I'm not going to tell you exactly what happens but it is definitely to do with Darnay and Carton. There's so much to love about the descriptive and beautiful language in this book that I have often called it a better gateway into the world of Dickens than say Oliver Twist is. I know that Oliver Twist is important, but A Tale of Two Cities is deeply interesting, it explores the dynamics of not only relationships but the importance of maintaining those you care about even in the darkest times. It is a strangely beautiful novel with sadness and melancholy whilst also having moments of happiness and love expended throughout.

I was so happy to revisit this book because I definitely needed to read something that at one point, I was very much in love with. If you have not read any Dickens, or you have read Dickens and been unable to get into his work, I would recommend you start here.