Just Couldn’t Finish Reading: Hard Times by Charles Dickens (FP: 1854) [283pp] 

What a surprise! After enjoying ‘A Christmas Carol’ and REALLY enjoying ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ to the extent of calling it one of my favourite classics, I just couldn’t get into ‘Hard Times’. I’m not 100% sure why exactly.  

It’s possible that it was because I was unfamiliar with the story. I had an inkling from the blurb on the back and was aware of Mr Gradgrind (Dickens has a wonderful character naming convention!) who was an ‘educator’ absolutely obsessed with FACTS and pounding them into the heads of the children in his care. Apart from that, all was new and fresh to me. But... As I expected the novel was populated by interesting, indeed unique, characters. I’m guessing that they were stand-ins for a type or category of person – the abandoned orphan, the middle-class chancer looking for an easy way to make money, the middle-class wannabe from very humble beginnings (something he won’t let anyone forget) and so on. Generally, I found them interesting especially the abandoned girl Sissy Jupe. I assumed (wrongly it turned out) that she was the heart, the focus of the story. Maybe she was, maybe she pulled everything together at the end... 

I think my big, major probable, the thing I really struggled with, was the narrative structure. As far as I could tell, before I gave up over half-way through, was that characters dropped in and out of things – often simply disappearing for chapters at a time with no explanation – and that the ‘action’ didn’t seem the go anywhere. The narrative flow, such as it was, meandered across the pages and chapters without, at least as far as I could see, any destination. Of course, it's entirely possible that the author intended this to show that things just ‘happen’ that a narrative structure is something imposed by the author (or the historian) where none actually exists but, if so, that didn’t really ‘do’ it for me. I certainly didn’t WANT to abandon this book – my 2nd and last permitted DNF of the year – but I found that I just couldn’t face picking it up and attempting to power through the last 1/3 (or so) of the text. A disappointing read – for ME that is – but it certainly hasn’t put me off reading more Dickens in future. Now that my (great) expectations have been tempered maybe I’ll enjoy my next outing with Chuck all the more!