Thickness: 160 pages
Read in dutch.
Personal rating: 3 stars (6,5 out of 10)
In short
This darkly satiric indictment of the social ills of Victorian London tells the story of a young orphan who becomes involved with a gang of criminals. (www.goodreads.com)
My two cents
I wasn't blown away by Oliver Twist. I went in expecting a similar feeling that I had when I read Pride and Prejudice but Oliver Twist felt like a children's story. Too many coïncidences, too much goodheartedness and cases of the right person at the right time. Oliver was an empty persona, just a name in a book instead of a human being with feelings, dreams and hopes.
The only alive character in this novel was Bill Sikes, I could feel his anger and terror after he killed Nancy and he was being hunted down. I felt sorry for the way he came to his end, although he would have spent his life in prison if it were up to me.
I've read up about Dickens, and Oliver Twist being his second novel, I can understand the flaws within it. It was my first Dickens, I will try a hand at another novel of his, hopefully a better and more mature one, but this will be a story I gladly will read to my daughter when she gets a little older. I'm sure she'll like it a bit more than I do.
