"As all Dickens's novels, reading Barnaby Rudge is an adventure I look forward to each night and dread when it's over. This one concerns a simple man whose intelligence is less than others, who lives his life in an optimistic manner with his mother and pet raven Grip. They live outside of town in an idyllic existence, Barnaby roaming through his beloved nature and his mother caring for him. Eventually, due to his inability to distinguish good from bad, the attentions of some unsavory characters, Hugh and Dennis, he gets swept into the Gordon Riots of 1780. Much of the last half of the novel follows this spectacle, with the mobs becoming more violent and destructive until the riot is brought down by the military. The reader is quick to notice the similarity to Tales of Two Cities, in which the mob swarms like a tidal wave into the Bastille and wreaks havoc and murder. I love historical novels, so this is an added dimension of greatness. Also, best of all are the characters paraded across the pages. No one creates them as well as Dickens. The Willets, Joe and Joe Jr. and their inn the Maypole; the Vardens, Gabriel, Martha, Dolly, and their helper Miggs; Mr Haredale and his niece Emma and their home the Warren; Sim Tappertit; Mr Chester and his son Edward; all of them find a place in the reader's mind as each is revisited throughout the novel. In addition to the anti-Catholic riots, an old unsolved murder lurks beneath the surface, that of Mr Haredale's brother. Love develops, as two couples eventually come together, Dolly and Joe, and Edward and Emma. Dickens also includes prison scenes at Newgate for those guilty of leading the riots, the type of scenes so often a part of his tales. I loved this book, its characters, and of course, the typical ending in which the good prevails and evil is punished. All loose ends are always completed in a Dickens's novel. Best of all are the sentences, the parallelism, the picturesque descriptions, full of wit, humor, and poignancy. Critics claim Dickens was influenced by Sir Walter Scott's historical fiction and Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven."
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Marcia (5 out of 5 stars)