Hard Times (Everyman's Library Classics & Contemporary Classics) (Hardcover)

"Dear reader! It rests with you and me, whether, in our two fields of action, similar things shall be or not. Let them be! We shall sit with lighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes of our fires turn cold and grey."

This novel is all about what one would think of as a dreary life in a north England mill town (fictitiously) called Coketown. It is named after the seemingly endless plumes of thick coal smoke being emitted from many different mills in this small lifeless town. But true to Dickens style he gives us a delightful set of characters that we can love or hate but who keep us entertained through a quick read of about 300 pages.

There is method in the madness, in that Dickens tries to push us in the direction of accepting that fate was not preordained for these folks and they could choose a better life if they so desired. He includes many biblical references and references to the mid 1800 culture to keep it all upbeat and entertaining.

I was expecting a more depressing plot to reflect the title "Hard Times", but in many ways it is good times for some of the characters, and as Dickens says at the end that he can hope for a positive outcome for their lives - the precise details of which he leaves us guessing.

Entertaining 5 star read at a bargain price by a wonderful author.

This is Dickens's shortest novel, about a third of the length of each of his previous four. Themes, subplots and characters are introduced without being fully explored. The author was perhaps feeling the constraints of writing in installments for a periodical, although he was well used to doing that. This relative brevity, together with the youth of some of the central characters, make this book a good introduction to Dickens for young readers.

There are the large dollops of Victorian melodrama and the reliance on unlikely coincidences that mar much of Dickens's work. Also the usual tendency for characters to become caricatures and to have names that are a little too apt (a teacher called Mr. McChoakumchild?).

The respected critic F.R. Leavis considered "Hard Times" to be Dickens's masterpiece and "only serious work of art". This seems to me wildly wrong, but such an extreme opinion may prompt you to read the book, just so that you can form your own opinion.

I read it because I had just finished "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair, which deals with the plight of Chicago factory workers, and I wanted to compare the two. Sinclair's book has greater immediacy. It takes you much closer to the suffering of the workers. In the Dickens novel, the mill workers and their plight are distanced; they are relegated to being the background to a family drama, which is what really interests the author. A third, and still greater work, that examines the same themes, is Zola's "Germinal". I recommend all three. Together, they give real insight into the social conditions that led to the proletarian political and revolutionary movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.