This was the first Charles Dickens book I had read, and despite its length of 880 pages, and the language, which took some getting used to, it has now joined my list of books which I will never forget, and will probably reread many times. It takes a couple of chapters to get into, but when you do get into it, you will fall into its pages, and for the days, weeks or months while you're reading it, you will only have to glance at a page to disappear into the world of Nicholas Nickleby.
The story follows the life of our central character, Nicholas Nickleby, after the death of his father. He moves to London with his sister and mother, but soon, needing a job, he leaves them to work in a school a long way away. It is here that we first meet Smike, an unhappy and helpless boy whom Nicholas befriends. Nicholas is very quickly, like the other inhabitants of the school, entirely unhappy. Events at the school build to a climax, resulting in Nicholas and Smike fleeing back to Nicholas's family in London. However, between the terrible schoolmaster, Squeers, (Dickens has a flair for naming his characters!) and Nicholas's cruel and money- obsessed uncle, Ralph Nickleby, life for the Nicklebys, and their devoted friend Smike, is far from uneventful. The book documents the many adventures, and more often misadventures, of Nicholas, Kate, their shallow and talkative mother, and the various characters they meet along the way.
The thing I most enjoyed about this book was the characters. At times it is hard to keep track of them all, but each character has a very developed personality. Nicholas was a very believable character- he was strong, brave, caring and intelligent, but none of these characteristics was unrealistically over- developed. He had enough depth and complexity to make him the kind of character you can relate well to and understand. His mother's incessant, mindless and highly irritating chatter contrasted perfectly with his steady, considerate patience.
Somebody once told me that Dickens's books are funny. I expected that. What I didn't expect was the moments when I was sitting there reading in a room full of family members, all staring at me as I laughed hysterically at the book. This is one of the very few books that has made me laugh out loud. It was mainly the character of Newman Noggs who provided the entertainment- Dickens's descriptions of his many oddities, especially in the scene where we first meet him, had me grinning like a lunatic.
I expected "Nicholas Nickleby" to be good. What I hadn't expected was the the way it captured my attention. Sometimes a chapter will be spent on some seemingly random and unrelated scene, which is forgotten until it is woven back into the story twenty or thirty chapters on, to create a complex and thrilling twist in the plot. The story's many layers and side- plots add a depth and extra dimension to the book that give it that bit more reality and complexity than any other book. I would give this book 10 out of 10.
