Word: dickensians
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...more twists quickly made you forget the original. Charlie is still too saintly, but Freddie Highmore—who should have garnered an Oscar nomination for his heartbreaking performance in “Finding Neverland,” also starring Johnny Depp (Wonka)—has the requisite Dickensian face and sweetly longing eyes. And the optimism of Grandpa Joe, played by excellent character actor David Kelly (“Waking Ned Devine”) nicely balances the humorous cynicism of Grandpa George...
...relics, moth-eaten keepsakes and old curiosities. Along the capital's streets, there are no high-rises, no nightclubs, no neon signs; even Coca-Cola is unknown here. At the offices of Burma Airways, as in every other office, there are no typewriters, let alone computer terminals, just bulky Dickensian ledgers thick with dust. The country boasts two TV stations, but neither of them broadcasts for more than two hours a day. If Burma did not exist, Evelyn Waugh would have had to invent...
Initially, I had reservations about the book; Dombey and Son is sort of second-tier Dickens, with especially broad characterizations and implausibly-integrated subplots. Buthaving already worked my way through first-tier DickensI persevered. Before long, I fell happily into the Dickensian rhythm: there were the requisite good lower-orders types and bad lower-orders types, the requisite super-virtuous young woman, the requisite scheming villains who would, I knew, ultimately be vanquished. By the time that the frail, angelic Paul Dombey (so frail and so angelic that his doom was assured from his first appearance in the novel that...
...forgotten, and the younger generation brave and happy, ready to strike out on their own. And as I closed Dombey and Son, my regret was mingled with fierce curiosity about their fates, and a sense that the unwritten part of their livesthe part that did not hew to the Dickensian pattern I knew so wellmight be more interesting than the part that had preceded...
...narrative holds its quota of surprises, but draws its force from the shrewd characterizations, which grant Dickensian life to what at first seem stock figures. Barnard, a closet satirist, is at his best when reviling his creations rather than cherishing them, and there are villains a plenty to hiss at in this oddly affecting tale...