Review by cattytrona - Hard Times

4.0

an anti-women in stem text for the ages!
this has an astounding first section, i was really caught up in the circus bit, and it’s such a shame sissy fades into perfect empath girl
this is a book stuffed with perfect good person models, my favourite of which is mr sleary for sure
beyond that lot, though, louisa’s kind of a triumph of engaged, pointed character writing, as is gradgrind, who works beautifully as a rerun at scrooge: i liked their near terribleness, because it made their goodness all the more impactful
authors dont mock and hate their nasty characters anymore, theyre not sarcastic and they dont say they should kill themselves like they used to
perfectly plotted to bring out the themes at every turn. how do you plot like this?
perhaps this is just in contrast with other dickenses, but this felt so short, practically a novella!
it’s interesting this seems to have been received as a labour novel, obviously i get why, but it feels far more an examination of the badnessgoodness of family
weird how different to the rest of dickens’ work this felt, purely because it was set in the north of england. like, what is this, a gaskell? obviously dickens is so intertwined with places in and around london, but i also know he travelled, so it shouldn’t have come as a shock that he could write elsewhere. yet it felt almost uncanny