gets soooo good after plot kicks in on page 750. and once that happens, the lead-up feels justified, honest.
the thing about dickens, i think, and i say that as someone still amateur at reading him, is that he obviously writes a lot of zany characters, but he embeds them so entirely in lively contexts - particularly families, but also friends and homes and little touches of character and turns of phrase - that you have no choice to remember that the real world is also composed of zany characters, most people being a little weird, which ultimately means that, more than a comedic tick, these characters become a site of actual empathy and reflections of reality, just sort of magnified.
the writing in this feels so modern, or at least not victorian, at times, particularly in the omniscient narrator bits with all their fragmented sentences. some gorgeous, surprising descriptions and evocations. i consistently would have rather been reading about esther - i got very lost in the labyrinth of court hanger-oners and shady shop keepers - but it's really something to read.