Fun listen, Dickens is a genius

I have a tradition of going through one Dickens novel a year and this one did not disappoint. For anyone unfamiliar with Dickens, his rare genius shines through every line. His voice is always ironic and funny and delightful. Prose is a game to him and he plays it beautifully. To anyone already familiar with Dickens, this is a good one (though not his best). Its characters are surpassingly cartoonish, inventive, horrifying and perpetually delightful (the main villain in particular is deliciously malicious). There is also some interesting character growth as well as interesting shifts in the centrality of characters over the course of the narrative.

As for the reading, I took a long time choosing George Hagan's out of the available options and I don't regret it. It is an old recording, and Hagan does make several mistakes: he corrects himself but without edits to cover up the errors. The voices, however, are fantastically good, and for that reason alone I highly recommend this recording despite its flaws. Do speed it up a bit though.

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