Review: A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First of all, kudos to Borders for a beautifully designed paperback edition with deckle edges and a heavy-duty cover with flaps usable for bookmarks, like a dust jacket on a hardcover.

Now, as for the content, this is what I want when I read other Dickens title: evocative description and metaphor, but with an economy unlike the over-writing I feel I encounter in his other novels. The setting from an American Revolutionary War espionage trial to the rapine of the freely wielded guillotine in a much bloodier revolution in France is recalls a fascinating era with as much of a sociological dimension to consider as The Holocaust: That happened.

I am not as much sold on the blood. I think the villainy of the Marquis St. Evrémonde, the cruel uncle of the heroic Charles Darnay, rather gets lots in this inter-generational and inter-continental tale. (I think Wuthering Heights does a better job with the decades of dastardly deeds perpetrated on a family by Heathcliff.) While on film he has been played by several actors and the Basil Rathbone portrayal of St. Evrémonde was nominated for AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains as one of the Top 50 Villains I think it can be argued that the film portrayal much more "cut to the chase" than the book.

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