Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Tale of Two Cities
    A Tale of Two Cities
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Audiobook15 hours

    A Tale of Two Cities

    Written by Charles Dickens

    Narrated by Buck Schirner

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

    From the author of David Copperfield and A Christmas Carol comes a novel which is among the most celebrated works in the history of literary fiction.

    Dickens' two cities are London and Paris during the time of the French Revolution. Dr. Manette, a French physician, having been called in to treat a young peasant and his sister, realizes that they have been cruelly abused by the Marquis de St. Evremonde and his brother. To ensure Dr. Manette's silence, the Marquis has him confined for eighteen years in the Bastille. As the story opens, the doctor has just been released. He is brought to England where he gradually recovers his health and his sanity.

    Charles Darnay, concealing his identity as the cruel Marquis' nephew, has left France and renounced his heritage. He falls in love with Lucie, Dr. Manette's daughter, and they are happily married. When he is called to Paris to save a servant condemned by the mob, Darnay himself is imprisoned, setting off a chain of events which will entwine the lives of Darnay and the degenerate barrister Sydney Carton in ways that reveal the profound effects of revenge, love, and redemption.

    This novel is part of Brilliance Audio's extensive Classic Collection, bringing you timeless masterpieces that you and your family are sure to love.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateApr 21, 2015
    ISBN9781491586136
    Author

    Charles Dickens

    An international celebrity during his lifetime, Charles Dickens (1812­–1870) is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His classic works include A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and A Tale of Two Cities, one of the bestselling novels of all time. When Dickens was twelve years old, his father was sent to debtors’ prison, and the boy was forced to work in a boot-blacking factory to support his family. The experience greatly shaped both his fiction and his tireless advocacy for children’s rights and social reform.

    More audiobooks from Charles Dickens

    Related to A Tale of Two Cities

    Related audiobooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Holden Caulfield And The Culture Of Sexual Assault

      Feb 12, 2018

      Since it came out in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye has meant different things to different readers. For some, Holden Caulfield was the rebellious voice of a generation; for many today, he’s a whiny rich kid; for a pair of recent biographers, he’s the

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The 40 Greatest Books To Read Before You Die

      Apr 25, 2021

      Books, books, books. They will increase your lifespan, lower your stress and boost your intelligence. They will give you fuller, thicker hair. Whatever the breathless claims about reading, one thing is certain: losing yourself in a great novel is one

      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In Summary

      Jul 1, 2021

      There’s some good writing here. This short extract has covered a lot of ground and established that Edwina is a recently widowed woman thanks to the sinking of the Titanic. Her interior voice is skilfully rendered and there are some subtle touches su

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The best-ever ROMANCES

      Jan 7, 2021

      The best-ever ROMANCES
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      1887 Vrc Derby

      Sep 30, 2021

      1887 Vrc Derby
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Country Diary

      May 11, 2022

      In the roll call of what fashionable nature writers call the British ‘soundscapes’, there can’t be many that can compete with dawn on a grouse moor in the North Pennines in late April. We parked the Land Rover and stumbled across white grass and heat

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hergest Ridge

      Jul 7, 2023

      Hergest Ridge
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Acting The Fool

      Aug 4, 2022

      Acting The Fool
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      'The Debatable Land' Probes The History Of A Chink In The Scottish-English Border

      Jun 19, 2018

      British historian Graham Robb explores the land that once supported the descendents of the first king of Scotland.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Irish Sea shanty

      Oct 16, 2024

      They dimmed the lights at Crewe. In the half-light, England rushed by, and a young man scolded his nan for drinking brandy before he was there to look after her. He would be with her in 40 minutes, he said. She said she’d downed her third. His tone w

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Kingdom To Come

      Sep 23, 2022

      The Kingdom To Come
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Testament to Survival

      Sep 1, 2020

      A Testament to Survival
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Last Of The English

      Aug 19, 2021

      The Last Of The English
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Peasants Are Not Revolting

      Mar 13, 2024

      WE couldn’t afford to live in St John’s Wood—think of the taxi fares’ (overheard in Claridge’s). ‘Are you going home with him?’ ‘I might as well: I am pregnant, anyway’ (overheard outside a Mayfair nightclub). ‘How do you take your coffee, madam?’ ‘L

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Going Dutch

      Dec 8, 2021

      THIS work covers a period neatly book-ended by two sea journeys: those of Matilda, William the Conqueror’s Flemish-speaking wife, and the Dutch William of Orange in 1688. Between the two dates, the fortunes of Anglo-Dutch literary relations, like tho

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Land Of Ghosts And Legends

      Feb 23, 2023

      Land Of Ghosts And Legends
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Land Of Ghosts And Legends

      Feb 23, 2023

      Land Of Ghosts And Legends
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Thomas St Serfe turns 400

      Aug 28, 2024

      Thomas St Serfe turns 400
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      'Black Tudors' Reveals a Surprising and Overlooked Chapter of History

      Nov 16, 2017

      Hidden in British archives and parish records are the identities of dozens of black people who lived in England during Tudor times.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Riots, Rows And Rinsing

      Sep 13, 2023

      ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO The Fancy in 1923 DARK, dark is the night – indeed, so dark that we see not; welcome would be a ray of light! While the more devout were indulging in prayer, another section of the community was appealing to be saved from a horr

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Tale of Two Cities

    4/5

    182 ratings175 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Hands down my favorite Dickens' novel. Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, this tale tells of the love, anger, jealousy, corruption and sacrifice. I don't want to ruin too much, but trust me- this is worth the read.
    • 4/5
      A Tale of Two Cities tells the tale of the French Revolution of 1978, and the times leading up to the Revolution, as it affects multiple characters from multiple socioeconomic backgrounds. The novel paints a vivid picture of the poorest of French citizens and the way in which their lives contrast with the overly glorified, gluttonous lives of the rich to emphasize the tension before the revolution. At the same time, the author incorporates aspects of the characters personal lives which creates a more realistic picture of the Revolution.There are two major protagonists in Dicken?s novel: Charles Darnay, the non-clich?d aristocrat who resides in England, and Sydney Carton, the stubborn attorney. Although I found both of these characters to be interesting, I had a hard time understanding the motives of their actions. In my opinion, I thought that the character development was slightly weak and because of this, I was not able to understand the two characters to the extent that I would have liked. I did, however, enjoy the way Dickens set Carton?s character as a foil for the character of Darnay. The evil, somewhat malicious personality of Carton contrasts with the more agreeable personality of Darnay, even though the two are both in love with the character of Lucie. The novel is set in third person limited point of view, which allows readers to view the heavy contrast between the different social classes. If Dickens had chosen to write in a first person point of view, readers would only have viewed the story from an extremely narrow window and would not have been able to understand the disparity between the rich and the poor, which was a major theme throughout the novel. This third person limited point of view used also allowed readers to read about very minute characters, characters of no vital importance to the story, which ultimately, helped reinforce the tension between the rich and poor. One of my favorite scenes in the entire novel follows a man named Marquis Evr?monde, a cruel member of the aristocracy. As the Marquis is riding down the countryside, his carriage runs over and murders a young boy of a lower class family. The marquis shows no sympathy for the boy he kills and continues on his way. Later, Marquis Evr?monde is punished for his action, in a very surprising way (I won?t give too much away). Although Marquis Evr?monde?s character never again appears in the novel, it was interesting to read about this man and his murderous actions and deserved punishments. I was very impressed with the author?s use of foreshadowing in A Tale of Two Cities as well. There were many times in the novel that indicated similar events to come. For example, my favorite scene involving Marquis Evr?monde foreshadows an uprising between the upper and lower classes and the death of the aristocracy. In addition to Dicken?s use of foreshadowing, there was also quite a lot of symbolism in the novel. Madame Defarge, a wine shop owner in France, spends her days knitting names into a woven piece of fabric. These names represent the people who are going to die due to the French Revolution. The quickness that Defarge knits these names into the fabric represents the informalities and immense numbers of deaths due to the revolution. Overall, I would recommend A Tale of Two Cities to anyone with a desire to read a classic, yet very thought provoking novel. Dicken?s use of foreshadowing and symbolism keeps the reader thinking, and the somewhat disturbing topic of the French Revolution keeps the reader intrigued.
    • 3/5
      The best part of the book can be summed up with two words: Sydney Carton. Immediately he seemed like he'd be the most disappointing, useless character in the whole story but that soon changed by the ending. His lines were the best and beautiful. All the other characters, except maybe Lucy and her husband and child, seemed to fill space in the heinous way of the Revolution.
    • 5/5
      A classic for all ages.
    • 5/5
      It has been more than ten years since I've read this and in truth I cam to re-reading it in the strangest way - it was referenced in a YA novel and I was reading that and I remembered how much I had loved this book and decided it was past time I read it again and saw if it was as good as I remembered.

      As it was - it was every bit as good as my teenage memories led me to believe and if anything it just got more tragic as I aged. I am the first to admit that I find Dickens extremely hit and miss as an author, which I know is bordering on blasphemous in some circles, but it is really true for me. His prose is often too flowery, his characters too unsympathetic and the novels too bleak to warrant the attention they require. This, based on the subject, should be in that category yet somehow it rises above the potential traps. We have a dark subject, a truly tragic hero, a rather unsympathetic and/or unlucky counter hero who gets bailed out, along with a rather bland heroine yet despite all that the book and the story rises above it all. The opening and closing lines are two of the most perfect lines in literature and everything in between just works.

      There are faults, yet somehow they don't really detract from the story. Maybe I'm biased, but even some of the irritating moments (Lucie is just one of those characters you roll your eyes at and deep down you want to know how she can justify sending another man to his death when her husband had knowingly endangered his own life in the first place) yet I find myself willing to overlook it. There are also parts of the book that are driven by plot other than characterisation and that jars a little. When Charles abandons his wife and child to go on a suicide mission I know we are supposed to be sympathetic of his goodness, but you just want to strangle him for his martyr complex and other moments that in a lesser story I would have judged more harshly. As it was, I overlook the flaws and concentrate on the good stuff and the good stuff is very, very good.

      This is a book I would recommend to anyone, and even if Dickens intimidates you, give it a try. It is a beautiful book with a wonderful story and one of those characters you will grow to love and will stay with you long after you finish.
    • 5/5
      Sometimes you read a book at just the right time, and now was just the right time for me to read A Tale of Two Cities. I'd never read it before and knew nothing of the story, going in, so it was a terrific adventure.

      There were three types of thing I was enjoying and paying attention to as I read. The first was just the rollicking good plot, and how Dickens carried it off--what pieces of information he planted when, in order to bring them up later, how some scenes in the beginning foreshadowed other scenes later on, how he interwove fast action with scene setting and so on. Some developments--namely, the climactic role to be played by Sydney Carton--I could see coming a mile off, but I didn't mind that fact. Other plot twists took me completely by surprise, such that I actually screamed aloud. Good story, Mr. Dickens!

      The second was the picture of a totalitarian state in the grip of an ideology. It could have been Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, but it wasn't; it was more than a century earlier than either. But you see the same focus on ideological purity, the same requirement that everything be sacrificeable to the ideology. When Doctor Manette, the beloved of the revolutionaries, protests his son-in-law's rearrest, he's told,
      If the Republic demands sacrifices from you, without doubt you as a good patriot will be happy to make them. The Republic goes before all. The People is supreme.
      (Not to imply that Dickens is saying that the population was wrong to revolt; on the contrary, he makes it quite clear that the revolution was justified: he paints the crimes of the aristocrats and the suffering of the population quite graphically. It's just where the engine of revolution goes once it's started rolling that he's appalled by.)

      The third thing is Madame Defarge. She has about 80 percent of the excellent, quotable lines of dialogue in the book, and the rest belong almost entirely to Sydney Carton. Her implacability, her will to destroy--it's breathtaking. She's pretty much a force of nature, like the things she draws on for her metaphors of retribution and revenge--lightning, earthquakes, wind and fire. Only when it becomes clear that she wants to destroy Charles Darnay's family down to his little daughter does she descend to true villain, and even then, her self-justifying speech isn't without persuasiveness:
      , I was brought up among the fishermen of the sea-shore, and that peasant family so injured by the two Evremonde brothers, as that Bastille paper describes, is my family. Defarge, that sister of the mortally wounded boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband was my sister?s husband, that unborn child was their child, that brother was my brother, that father was my father, those dead are my dead, and that summons to answer for those things descends to me!
      Her family died unjustly; why, then, should not the family of those responsible for their deaths pay the price?

      Why not indeed. There's the argument that revenge is a hunger that cannot be satisfied: the more deaths you feed it, the hungrier it becomes. But that's not the argument Dickens makes. His is more about human kindness. The revenge that Madame Defarge wants is her personal ideology, to which all must be sacrified (even her husband--nothing is more important than the idea of revenge. Dickens simultaneously shows the magnificence of someone who's given their life to an idea . . . and also the horror. The particularistic claims of human affection have no sway over her--her humanity itself is sacrificed to the idea in her head, her drive for revenge, and that's what Dickens finds fascinatingly horrible.
      ...And I have more to say, maybe, but it's late and I'm falling asleep as I type. More later! (Maybe)
    • 4/5
      There were a few times whre I got slightly lost in a few pages, but I quickly got back into the story, which was, unbearably sad. I never expected to like this novel so much, and to care about what happens next. The story moved me and appalled me with the descriptions of the madness and murderous French revolt.?
    • 4/5
      Not Dickens' best work... his second attempt at an historical novel is rather less skilled than the first. Combines the faintly irritating sentimentality of "Oliver Twist" with the lack of planning and consequent improbability of "Pickwick"
    • 5/5
      "... all through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire..."

      [sigh]

      My love of books began with this novel. When I think about A Tale of Two Cities, and Sydney Carton in particular, I feel the same ache in my chest that I feel when I think about real people I love.

      Dickens had such a brilliant mind. Even his non-fiction work captivates me. Read his "A Visit to Newgate" if you don't know what I'm talking about, and this novel, well there's simply none better.

    • 3/5
      This is the novel that the author had written about the London and Paris before and after France revolution.It is mainlu written about the difference between the aristcrats and the civils.The vocabulary is not difficult,but the relationships of chractersare complex,at first,it is thought that you are hard to underdstand.
    • 4/5
      This book has many fine parts. Dickens' remarks about the behavior of the mob that follows the funeral cortege in London is timeless. The fight between Miss Pross and Madame Defarge is amusing yet crucial to the plot. However, Sydney Carton is not all that convincing as a dissolute, worthless rake --- he drinks a lot, has a steady if not prominent job, and has a noble and selfless passion for Lucie Manette. How bad can he really be? Should we all go looking for guillotine's to rid ourselves of our not entirely adequate lives in a noble cause? How precious are the people he sacrifices himself for anyway? Are they merely an excuse? Is this just suicide by republic?Of course, Dickens was also trying to make a political and social point about cruel injustice revenged leading to yet greater and more widespread cruelty and disregard for human life. That point is fairly timeless as well.Ian Richardson's reading is excellent...his female characters are quite astonishingly good and his accents as well.
    • 4/5
      It's good. Who knew?
    • 3/5
      The thing is, Dickens waffles on such a lot and in such flowery language that it's quite hard to concentrate when I'm used to sparse sentences Graham Greene style. The story was enjoyable, Lucie's character annoyed me a bit by being so angelic and innocent, but when the story picked up in Paris I couldn't put the book down, seriously.
    • 2/5
      The two cities are London and Paris on the eve of and during the French Revolution. This is Dickens' one work of historical fiction and the most popular of his books among American readers according to one poll. I've tried reading it before and found it boring. I recently read Great Expectations and liked it more than I expected, and A Christmas Carol is a sentimental favorite, so I decided to give this another try. I do love many classic works, but I'm afraid Dickens is going to remain a non-favorite. His characters are certainly vivid and memorable--but they're often over-the-top. The opening (It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...) and closing (It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done...) sentences to this book are among the most eloquent and famous passages in literature. But I mostly found his prose overwritten, repetitive, and melodramatic. (He'll take a refrain like "recalled to life" and beat it to a bloody pulp.) But what really made me cringe, and a major reason why I think I find it so hard to like Dickens, is how he writes his women characters. Great Expectations was refreshing in having a bitchy heroine in Estella, but Lucie Manette reverts back to type. An "angel" with "golden hair" and "rosy lips" and everyone loves her and she's prone to swoon and to tears. I find this kind of female figure infantile, both in the sense that a character such as Lucie doesn't strike me as a functioning adult nor can I see this as a mature view of women. And I don't think we can say, well, that's the way woman were back then, or the way woman were seen. It's not surprising certainly that female Victorian authors such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charlotte Bronte were capable of writing women characters that feel real--but so were male authors such as William Thackeray, Wilkie Collins and E.M. Forster--and for that matter even medieval and Renaissance authors such as Shakespeare managed a lot better than this. Also, hello, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are doubles? And believe me, the improbable coincidences do not stop there. Color me eccentric, but that doesn't constitute good plotting to me. And frankly, Sydney Carton isn't my kind of hero. His sacrifice to me seems cloyingly sentimental and abrupt. Give me the Scarlet Pimpernel any day! Or for that matter Ebenezer Scrooge, whose redemption comes in the hard work of living life, not whining he's no good then throwing his life away.
    • 3/5
      I love reading Dickens, but I did not love reading this book. I doubt that it?s in the curriculum any more, but I can understand a blogger who recently wrote that he avoided Dickens for years after being forced to read it. True, it opens and closes on two of the most memorable, and quoted, sentences in English fiction, and it contains some stirring scenes. There?s also a satirical tone in many places, comparing the grandiose pretensions of the English nobility with the imperiousness of the French. The tone initially suggests some of Dickens? usual humour, but it is far more bitter than usual with Dickens. This turns into the deep pathos of a broken man and his daughter, to be followed by the triumph of love (both familial and romantic), reversal and finally rescue and transcendence. The transcendence is big here.But it?s a general humourlessness and shallowness that makes the book hard to read for me. Dombey and Sons, the last Dickens novel I read, was perhaps equally somber in tone, but it had sympathetic characters and psychological depth. In Two Cities, the only sympathetic character is old Dr. Manette, wrongly imprisoned in the Bastille for 16 years and psychologically fragile when released. His friend, the banker Mr. Lorry, is surprisingly sympathetic as well, although a side character to the central events of the story. The other lead characters are so thinly drawn that they have no real presence. Lucie Manette is a typical Dickens heroine, devoting her whole life first to her father, then to her husband. Charles has apparently renounced his French title in disgust, but we know little about him beyond his nobility of character and courage. Both are idealized stereotypes that I never felt any connection to, so when they first find happiness, then tragedy, I found myself wishing they?d just get on with it and bring the story to its end. Even the minor characters, usually so interesting in Dickens, hold little interest. Jerry Cruncher and his young son seem to be there only to entertain the English working class readers, but they add nothing to the storyline. The French nobles seem to be deliberately drawn as indistinguishable archetypes, while the French revolutionaries are so exaggerated that they are more like scary nineteenth-century cartoons than even Dickens? usual figures. Dickens, while acknowledging their oppression, portrays the residents of the countryside, and particularly the St Antoine district of Paris, as terrifyingly out of control, insane and diseased. This contrasts starkly with the orderliness of Lorry?s good English business sense, and the common sense of Miss Pross, Lucie?s nursemaid and friend. The French revolutionary mob is a scarecrow, built out of the most frightening elements, but a hollow creation.Was this because Dickens? abhorrence and fear of the French revolutions, writing just 10 years after the wide-spread upheavals of 1848, drove him to choose to demonize everything about it? The novel seems to be as much a propaganda piece against working-class revolution, and in support of British stability, as it is a paean to true love and noble virtue. Unfortunately, this thought makes me suspect many of Dickens? other popular works. Dickens is known for his depictions of the oppressed and impoverished life of the English working class, and this is reflected here in his many references to the extreme poverty and privation of the French peasants and labourers. But the reaction that he depicts in France is so ignorant and brutal, and unbalanced, that it appears to be a warning to English readers not to do anything rash in trying to overcome the conditions he depicts in England. The novel comes across as profoundly conservative and reactionary, and makes me wonder about his actual political leanings (particularly after becoming a wealthy property owner himself). Perhaps the most charitable reading of the novel is as a warning to the English upper classes to avoid oppressing the working class so much that they have no alternative but revolution. But I think his readers are more likely to be lower or middle than ruling class, so this message, if that?s what it is, is not well directed.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. I wasn't so sure about it as I started reading, but the way everything tied together at the end won me over.
    • 3/5
      A tough, but rewarding read.Chances are very great I would have never read this classic if I wasn't going to teach it. Furthermore, I would have never assigned it to high school students, and I feel guilty for doing so.It's Dickens, and the language, tone, and approach is acutely Victorian. All the sentimentality of the Victorians are there with Dr. Mannette and his daughter, Luce, as well as with Sidney Carton's own morose, fatalisitc, and subservient behavior. If you combine the aforementioned with sentences that stack dependent clauses, long appositives, and long phrases upon the independent clause or clauses, the risk of the reader losing focus becomes a real possibility. I'm glad I didn't resort to the "Ol' Cliffnotes" ruse, but it would have been totally understandable if one did.Instead, I sloughed myself through it. As much as I have prior knowledge of the French Revolution, Dickens portrayal of the bloodlust of that time was unforgettable. Such numbers who were arbitrarily chosen for victims of the guillitine, and mob mentality, Dickens conveys all too vividly--in particularly "The Grinding Wheel" chapter of the mob killing the prisoners. Although I rated A Tale of Two Cities with three stars, it is a great read, but one that requires a really great deal of concentration and amazing resolve to finish, and I am glad I did so.I plan to read more of Dickens, as soon as I can regain my literary senses of patience and resolve, all which have been expended after this one.Whew!
    • 5/5
      Almost everyone knows the basics of this story along with the opening lines and the closing lines.This was Dickens at his absolute best! The horrible cruelty of the French Revolution, the virtue and bravery of some of the characters, the oppression that caused other hearts to turn to stone - it all made for quite a ride, indeed! Dickens really hit with a one-two punch with this book!Omigod, what a book! It has now become my favorite Dickens, and that is saying a lot!
    • 4/5
      I started listening to this on CD a month ago while I was sewing, and then I listened to it some more while I was painting my bedroom, and then I couldn't wait to get to the end, so I read the last half-dozen chapters from my copy of the book, in bed one night. I love Dickens, and this book is no exception; bonus points for teaching me more about the French Revolution than I learned in school, while managing to also maintain an individual human scope. Most of thecharacters are perhaps less "Dickensian" than usual, although there are notable exceptions (Mr. Cruncher as a messenger who "moonlights" as a grave robber and chides his wife for "flopping" is probably the most notable). Dickens doesn't have a 150-year-old reputation as the master of verbiage and characterization for nothing; what more can I say?
    • 5/5
      I know that Dickens is an acquired taste and for many of you reading this your interest in any of his novels is minimal at best. But I hope you'll hear me out as I gush about my favorite Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities. Yes, it's his most famous work. That is for a very good reason. It's absolutely phenomenal. The story is told before and during the French Revolution and focuses on a key group of characters who one instantly feels are real. Your heart aches for Dr. Manette, you stand a little straighter with Darnay, and you are filled with hope for the future by Carton. A story of loss, love, and liberty; A Tale of Two Cities can't be beat.
    • 5/5
      This is the first book I read by Dickens, and I am definitely glad that I did because after reading this book I want to read more Dickens. It was great to finally read the opening lines of the book, after listening to people quote it all my life. It was a little difficult for me to get into the book, but about half way through it started getting very interesting and exciting. I loved that Dickens had two stories going on in the book and how they connected and inertwined. Tale of Two Cities is definitely a book that I will read many times in the future.
    • 4/5
      My favorite Dickens book!
    • 2/5
      A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens is a venerated classic that I'm sure will forever stand the test of time as one of the all-time great novels. But I have to wonder, how many have actually read it? I labored through to about the halfway point before deciding it wasn't worth torturing myself over anymore."It was the best of times..." This is one of the best opening lines you'll ever read. It's so powerful?so famous?that you can't help but sense you're at the precipice of something extraordinary. After that, get comfortable. An oblivion of rambling narration and unmemorable characters awaits. Maybe A Tale of Two Cities suffers from too great an expectation? (Sorry, couldn't resist.)I'll grant that I probably wasn't in the right state of mind, or that I didn't approach this particular work of Dickens' from the right vantage point, so perhaps I'll try again when I'm older and wiser. Until then, pass.
    • 5/5
      It?s been days now since I finished Tale of Two Cities, but still having a hard time shaking it. The opening of the book ? ?It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ?? foreshadows up the conundrum to come ? how can a story of so much horror also be a story of so much love, nobility, and self-sacrifice? I postponed reading the book much longer than I should have because, frankly, I worried for my emotional well-being. Having barely survived the death of Little Nell, I wasn?t sure I had the intestinal fortitude to handle a Dickens novel set during the horrors of the French Revolution. The inescapable irony, of course, is that great love/nobility/sacrifice can only exist in the midst of horror. And so it is in this riveting, heartwarming/heartbreaking tale of (with apologies to The Princess Bride) ?true love? in all its forms ? selfish, platonic, filial, romantic, unrequited. As I expect most folks already know, the tale centers around a triumvirate of characters ? the beautiful, virtuous Lucie Manett, her psychologically fragile old father Doctor Manette, and Charles Darney, an honorable young French nobleman who has moved to England in order to renounce any association with the atrocities of the Revolution. And since this is Dickens, they are kept company by a bakers dozen other brilliantly imagined and realized characters, from the coarse but faithful Crusher to the stolid-businessman-with-a-heart-of-gold Lorry, from the ambitious French revolutionary DeFarge to his ghastly wife Madame DeFarge, from self-aggrandizing lawyer Stryver to perhaps one of Dickens? most tragic characters, the self-destructive university student Sidney Carton. Inevitably, our young lovers Charles and Lucie end up in the hands of the Revolution, whereupon I headed for the tissue box, foreseeing the tragic end. But because this is Dickens (again), I should have expected that the tragedy would be a complex thing: that heroes would turn out to be flawed, that villains would turn out to be less heartlessly villainous as they may at first have appeared, and that otherwise ordinary people would turn out to be capable of extraordinary acts of courage and sacrifice. As in many other Dickens novels, the author doesn?t shy away from realistically portraying the cruelty and brutality of which human society is capable. Some of the people and scenes depicted in this tale are simply appalling. And yet, somehow, Dickens always manages to pilot us through the morass to a place where human decency ends up triumphing over all the obstacles set against it. Am not sure why Sidney Carton doesn?t get the press that other literary greats ? Gatsby, Ahab, Heathcliff, Atticus Finch, etc. ? have garnered, because I feel like he more than deserves a spot in the pantheon. Be that as it may, he?s definitely earned a spot in my list of great characters in literature, and whether or not he?s enjoying the far, far better rest he wholeheartedly deserves, I know I?m a far better and richer person for having met him and for allowing Dickens, once again, to whisk me away on an unforgettable journey.
    • 4/5
      I genuinely liked this book. Fast read for a classic. Dickens had me so convinced that it was going to end badly, that I hated the entire first 3/4 of the book, and then laid it down for awhile because I was sick and thought that reading the conclusion would make me feel worse. Obviously I was anticipating a bad ending. But he came through with a spectacular hero's ending, making one of the least noteworthy characters into the saving grace of the whole story. Happy endings are good. Well done. ...Oh, and wait til you hear what happens to Madame Defarge. So gratifying. Good guys prevail!!!
    • 4/5
      One of Dicken's best known stories, set amidst the bloody chaos of the French Revolution, and deftly spanning two countries, multiple generations, and a myriad of characters, in less space than any of his other novels occupied. The story begins with a rainy journey of Mr. Jarvis Lorry, a banker, who has received a mysterious message and is setting off to France. He picks up a beautiful young girl en route, and together they meet a poor prisoner who has recently been released from the Bastille. The deranged man is Dr. Manette, once a renowned physician in France, and the beautiful girl is Lucie Manette, the doctor's daughter who had believed her father dead until her visit with Mr. Lorry. The doctor is quite undone from his countless years in prison, locked away as a secret prisoner, and is fixated on the shoe making he took up during that time. Nonetheless, Lucie manages to make an impression on her father where all others had failed, and she and Mr. Lorry spirit him back to England, where Lucie had been living, before he can be locked up again by the anonymous antagonist who had him imprisoned in the first place.The story then jumps some years into the future, picking up in the middle of an intense trial against a supposed traitor to the British crown. Charles Darnay has been accused of being a spy for France, and despite the unsavory and untrustworthy nature of his chief accuser, the proceedings don't look good for the noble Darnay. The reader meets Lucie Manette and her father again, this time as unwilling witnesses against the defendant. Exposition reveals that Alexandre Manette has recovered his intellect and strength of character while living in England with his daughter, and that Lucie is clearly in love with the prisoner rapidly heading to a death sentence. However, a last minute reveal by Darnay's lawyers, motivated by the genius of dissolute Sydney Carton, saves the man and frees him from all charges against him!A peaceful interlude for the main protagonists then ensues, although the author intersperses scenes from back in France, where dark rumblings suggest the horrible events that are about to unfold. In England, however, all is well. Lucie and her father have found a small house in a peaceful pocket of London, where they visit with Mr. Lorry, who has become an intimate of the family. Charles Darnay also frequently visits, as does Sydney Carton and Mr. Stryver, the lawyer who was in charge of Darnay's case. A handful of minor characters are also introduced and developed. such as Mr. Lorry's every man Jerry Cruncher, and Lucie's attendant Miss Pross. Dickens uses this space to weave his masterful characterization, painting these people with varied and complicated personalities, and observing several humorous episodes along the way. Eventually, Lucie and Charles marry, they honeymoon and return, never knowing that Lucie's father had a complete breakdown while they were away, and then the novel again fast forwards to a future point in time.Charles Darnay is concerned. Although he lives happily under his assumed name in England, rumors of the unrest from his home have reached him, and he feels an obligation to the peasants. It is revealed in the novel that Darnay is actually an aristocrat, in a family who he despises for their cruelty and greed. Now that his malicious uncle is dead, his estates have been abandoned. Darnay learns about the signs of a peasant revolt and believes he can go to them and help ease their hard situation in life; he has always sympathized with them, but been able to help because his father and then uncle ruthlessly suppressed all compassion. Of course, Darnay is deluded in his imaginations of how the peasants will receive him; as soon as he arrives on French soil, he is apprehended, brought to the Bastille, and locked away. During his long voyage over sea, the revolution had surged to a pinnacle of bloodshed and overthrow, but since he couldn't receive news on the ship, he had no idea how bad everything had become. From this point on, the reader is immersed in the terror and suspense of the French Revolution.
    • 5/5
      First read this 46 years who, in high school. I listened to the audio this time. Excellent book by Dickens!
    • 4/5
      This is my favorite Dickens because it contains a bit more history than his other works. I love the picture it presents of the French Revolution and its effect on Europe.
    • 5/5
      It's easy to forget that A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens' only historical novel (that is, set in a period that was historical to him). To us, all of his novels are historical, but for this story he had to reach back and do research to make the period come alive. And come alive it does, in all its bloody, fiery glory. This is one of his shorter works but its characters and events are unforgettable. From the loyal Miss Pross and the sinister Madame DeFarge, the tragic ne'er-do-well Sydney Carton and the business-like but soft-hearted lawyer Jarvis Lorry, A Tale of Two Cities is peopled with personalities that stay with you long after the last page.The plot is so well known I scarcely need to outline it. Set mainly during the French revolution, it's the story of a family indelibly touched by oppression and then haunted by its daughter, revenge. It's a story of a brilliant man who voluntarily chooses failure due to some innate defect of initiative and character?like one caught in a net who struggles only vainly and soon lapses back into its folds. It's a story of a nation fighting so violently to change itself that it does, but only into a mockery of the ideal it once espoused. A happy ending is snatched from the flames, but they burn up so much first. Carton's sacrifice in trading his life for Darnay's is often compared to that of Jesus Christ, who took the place of condemned criminals so they could go free. There's an interesting reversal in Dickens' picture, however; Darnay, the condemned, is morally innocent of the crimes for which he is sentenced to die. He neither oppressed nor enslaved the French serfs, but only had the misfortune of descending from those who did. Carton, on the other hand, is not so virtuous. While entirely unconnected with the French aristocracy and its crimes, still his life, compared to Darnay's, seems almost a morally culpable waste. In a sense, it was he and not Darnay who was saved by that final, beautiful sacrifice. Becoming a mother has sharpened the emotions I experience when reading novels or watching movies that depict suffering and loss within families. I think of my child being bereft of his father so cruelly like little Lucy almost was, for no good reason at all, and how hard widowhood and single motherhood would be (sadly, an all too common reality for many). Creation groans. And while the Darnays do escape and Carton does give meaning to his entire life through a courageous death, it is such a dreadful road to get there. I love how Dickens can show us the hearts and minds of both the maddened peasants who have experienced and therefore commit unthinkable atrocities, and the pleasure-loving aristocracy who suddenly find themselves reaping the bloody harvest they have sown. Dickens is able to enter into the suffering of both sides and while his deepest sympathies are with the oppressed serfs, still he has a tear for those among the aristocracy who are so brutally handled by their former slaves. In between are so many people, caught up in the bloodshed without really having had any stake in it, like the seamstress executed just before Carton, or the simple mender of roads who accidentally becomes a revolutionary. Saddest of all is the children on both sides who suffer for things they had nothing to do with: both the children of the peasants and those of the aristocracy. It's a bit like original sin; you're born to it and all your choices spring from that circumstance. Simply put, don't miss A Tale of Two Cities. It's grippingly good.
    • 4/5
      Great book in so many ways, most of which I am sure will have been covered by other reviewers, so I'm just going to go ahead and get this off my chest:Ok Charlie, I get it, it's a metaphor. Your metaphor is about as subtle as a breeze block across the head, do you really then need to spend the next paragraph explaining exactlty what it means? I'm not a complete imbecile!There, I did it. I can relax now.