When Dickens is sentimental or moralizing, things drag; it’s hard not to roll one’s eyes. I was trying to articulate, the other day, what I found off-putting about this book: the plot twists that feel manipulative, the way the characterizations are so black and white, morally speaking. But there’s plenty that’s good too: plenty that’s funny, and warm, and human. There’s a pony in particular that made me grin every time he stubbornly inspected the lamp posts or refused to walk forward; there are passages like this one, so pleasingly full:<\/p>\n
The cold sharp interval between night and morning \u2014 the distant streak of light widening and spreading, and turning from grey to white, and from white to yellow, and from yellow to burning red \u2014 the presence of day, with all its cheerfulness and life \u2014 men and horses at the plough \u2014birds in the trees and hedges, and boys in solitary fields, frightening them away with rattles. The coming to a town \u2014 people busy in the markets; light carts and chaises round the tavern yard; tradesmen standing at their doors; men running horses up and down the street for sale; pigs plunging and grunting in the dirty distance, getting off with long strings at their legs, running into clean chemists’ shops and being dislodged with brooms by ‘prentices; the night coach changing horses \u2014 the passengers cheerless, cold, ugly, and discontented, with three months’ growth of hair in one night \u2014 the coachman fresh as from a bandbox, and exquisitely beautiful by contrast: \u2014 so much bustle, so many things in motion, such a variety of incidents […] (p 436-437)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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