Review: Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dickens creates such an terrifying circumstance for the little tyke at the very start, one cannot help but wish to uplift young Oliver Twist (and his little friends). I wanted to take him home and give him some hot chocolate and a pat on the head, hell, I would keep him for sure! He has kindness and compassion in his heart which will not be easily corroded. Almost everyone is out to manipulate the kid, even the ones - like the young girl Nance - I hoped would be helpful to him. He is abducted to dark and narrow streets of London, where the dirt and mud and impoverishment reflect the broken spirits living there. He is taught how to be a thief. The Artful Dodger and Charley Bates are lively little crooks, underlings of Fagin, and Sikes (with his mean dog in tow) is a frightful and towering king of this underworld.

This book establishes a nice rhythm and is narrated very well (strong and consistent voice). Many of Dickens' books were first published as serials in the London papers. I had to find out how Oliver would make out in the end, if he was to survive at all. Plenty of others like him died of starvation, fever, neglect, and broken hearts. Others turned to crime and saw the gallows. These were mean streets of old London, and Dickens does not spare us the details. In fact, he holds a candle to it all. He brings you into the darkest corners, then gets your adrenaline up as Oliver's situation becomes inadvertently hopeful, before being lost again to the murky, insensate underworld. It takes one who initially betrayed him and others who gave up looking for him, to unite and try to save him from a terrible fate on the streets. In the process, the mystery of his birth is unraveled. Aside from his rich/poor politics and narrow portrayal of Jews, I love the way Dickens tells a story. This story.

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Rolling allostasis -iv)

She was in her twenties, when she surfaced from the midsection of an iceberg, the frozen contents of some formerly fluid collective subconscious experience. In the middle of nowhere, mind you. A slow drip of unhappening. Congealed into living memories (consistency of molasses).  So she thawed from her heart out, and the ice around her began to soften in her light and heat, and collect supine at her feet. Aqua devotion. If water had hands... then prayer beneath her dry eyes. So rare did this sorta manifestation occur. The glaciers melt in their natural way before her. And she takes her damn time. You don’t hurry a glacier. You age it, like wine. Or wait for her to melt, to reference empirical evidence of global warming. Melting butter at room temperature. She never left the kitchen table. Painting her daily bread. Turning and turning yellow over time with the wallpaper. Gotta get worse before she gets better. Baby blue with white flowers, soft and malleable. Almost vulnerable, fallible – almost human again. As she wishes. As they want her. Sorry says the fight inside her, delivering the roundhouse Queen Anne Victorian style. Round one...TKO. From a frozen warrior #2 asana. Feel the heat. Sauna.

She got more high than school (a chemical romance -1)

She was a dandelion chewin, flatbed lyin, urban cowboy screwin, truant from way way back. Like high school. She got more high than school. He was a youngbood creepin' west-side posturin' punk from Detroit, and he must of run game on her cause she thought he was the shit. She called him the m.o.a.b. thats the mother of all bombs. He called her the m.o.a.b. too. Mother of all bitches.

Her friends sought out to neutralize his fake ass masquerade, and win her back like a scratcher recompense for a month long losing streak. Her friends lacked mercy. Here it gets worse, see. Their connection grew more intimate, exclusive and chronic. He had stepped out upon her moonscape. She revolved around his planet.

Little did she know the gravity of his influence: demonic, sideways, maybe halfway satanic. Her tides came in rushes, in spurts, twice a day now. She was emotionally rewired to his synthetic new standard. He watched her do dishes, he watched her ass move. He lay listless in bed, like nothing to prove. The only extension he gave to support her? A bourgeouise yawn, with laisssez faire torture...

to be continued