Synopsis: 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. Specs: Adult fiction, published in 1837, 380 pages.
I'm a little wary of reviewing Oliver Twist since it's a timeless and classic book...but I will anyway. It was entertaining, and even very humorous at times (which surprised me). But Dickens tends to ramble on in quite a few paragraphs. And since it's such an old book, there were many words I didn't recognize and sentences were worded differently.
There were a lot of different characters from opposite ends of the spectrum, which I liked. Reading about people who all have almost the same personality gets boring. In Oliver Twist, there was the truly evil (Sikes and the Jew), the not-so-evil-but-still-pretty-bad (Artful Dodger), the ones who want to be good but in the wrong situation (Nancy, Charles Bates), and the good (Oliver, Mrs. Maylie and Rose, Mr. Brownlow). Oliver good have gotten in league with any of these people, but thankfully he chose the right crowd, which unfortunately doesn't happen very often in reality.
Oliver Twist is a devastating story of an orphan who wonders the streets, has no family, and to which catastrophes always seem to happen. But Oliver somehow manages to stay optimistic in his trial-filled life, and everything turns out well in the end, with Oliver finally living a normal life with family around him.
