I first read this book four or five years ago. On the second read through it was a good deal easier to understand; I think that the language and the plot both are rather more flowery than is often necessary. I’m not terribly enamored of the characters, of whom perhaps Sydney Carton is the most interesting. I read Great Expectations as well, and found that work quite a lot more interesting.

That said - this book is a towering classic for a reason, and it’s not only because it has perhaps the most famous opening and closing sentences in English literature. Confused identities, mistaken names, and relatedly, occluded vision and impeded hearing - all of these create a foggy, obfuscated story in which the reader is constantly wondering whether or not to trust the narrator. Moreover, the parallel-tracks theme is well executed and fascinating; beyond the obvious, eponymous contrast between English and French society, there are as well any number of complicated contrasts: between Carton and Darnais, between imprisonment and the struggle for daily existence, between commerce and passion; and even between life and death.

On that topic: what I enjoyed the most in this re-read was the ways in which A Tale of Two Cities shadowed Les Miserables. (And I do mean shadow: I think Les Mis is a much more wonderful story.) The resurrected Christ-figure of Valjean and Manette; the simpering characters of Cosette and Lucie; and the watered-down aristocrats that are Marius and Darnais are striking resemblences in the cast. The themes of resurrection and flight are strong in both, as are the underlying sympathy for the struggle of working people and their insurrection. (Although of course, Dickens’s sympathy is a good deal more muted than Hugo’s, and at the end of the day they’re writing about entirely different rebellions.)

At the end of the day - I’m glad I read A Tale of Two Cities, but really more for the benefit of comparison against Great Expectations and Les Miserables. I suspect that Dickens flattened his characters in this book intentionally; I can’t really guess why he did that (other than simple crowd-pleasing); but in the final analysis, I can’t say it was really all that much fun to read.