{"id":10600,"date":"2007-08-30T12:25:41","date_gmt":"2007-08-30T16:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2007\/08\/30\/10600.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:56:56","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:56:56","slug":"book-report-dombey-and-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2007\/08\/30\/book-report-dombey-and-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Dombey and Son"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m not sure if Dombey and Son<\/a> is considered early Dickens. I think it’s the earliest of his books that I like pretty much unreservedly. The early books—Pickwick<\/I>, Oliver<\/I>, NickNick<\/I>, Curiosity Shop<\/I> aren’t that great, although I am fond of NickNick<\/I> largely because it was the magnificent David Edgar RSC production (as televised on PBS) that gave me a taste for Dickens. I haven’t read Barnaby Rudge<\/I>, and Chuzzlewit<\/I> is only fairly good. And then comes Dombey<\/I>.\n

After Dombey<\/I>, there’s Copperfield<\/I>, which I don’t really like, Bleak House<\/I>, which I adore, Hard Times<\/a>, of which I am very fond, Little Dorrit<\/a>, which is a thing of beauty<\/a>, and A Tale of Two Cities<\/a>, which everyone likes. That’s a four-novel peak, by the way, that is absolutely outstanding. And I suspect from Dombey<\/I> to Great Expectations<\/I> (the next book after Two Cities<\/I>, it’s as good a seven-book VORN as anybody’s. It’s hard to compare across eras, of course, but looking at dominance over his contemporaries, you see why people put him in the inner circle.\n

I would argue, though, that the decline phase begins with Expectations<\/I>, which starts extremely well but bogs down toward the end. After that, it’s Our Mutual Friend<\/I>, which I haven’t read and the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood<\/I>.\n

Now, I don’t know if people consider Dombey<\/I> to be the start of the dominant peak, or if they consider it the end of the early period. There are some problems with the book, most notably the authorial harping on the details of the theme of pride, rather than saving the authorial punch until we are weakened by the shown events. On the other hand, there’s a fantastic female character, one with some actual character, and that lifts this book well out of the ordinary. Either way, it’s worth reading. You know, if you like Dickens.\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not sure if Dombey and Son is considered early Dickens. I think it\u2019s the earliest of his books that I like pretty much unreservedly. The early books\u2014Pickwick, Oliver, NickNick, Curiosity Shop aren\u2019t that great, although I am fond of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10600"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16215,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10600\/revisions\/16215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}