The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby Audiobook

The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby is closely modelled on the eighteenth-century novels that Charles Dickens loved as a child, such as Robinson Crusoe, in which the fortunes of a hero shape the plot. The likeable young Nicholas, left penniless on the death of his father, sets off in search of better prospects. His meandering route to happiness includes work as a teacher at Dotheboys Hall, where the brutal Wackford Squeers ill-treats his impoverished pupils, and a spell as an actor with the absurdly melodramatic Crummles troupe.

Nicholas's many adventures give Dickens the freedom to follow the eccentricities of a vivid gallery of characters, exploring themes of class, love, and self-awareness with exuberant comedy and biting satire.

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"This is classic serial Dickens: the bad people are very, very bad and the good people are so very very good. I really liked this book but the truth is if it was written by someone other than Dickens, I probably would have only given it 3 stars. I have such admiration for Dickens and, after reading the foreword of the book, that admiration only deepened. There were a lot of twists and turns in this novel, which I enjoyed and which made it hard to put down sometimes. On the downside, I definitely could have lived without some of the sub-plots, which were more of a distraction than anything else. At one point when a character who hadn't been seen in a while re-entered the scene I was like "oh, this guy? yawn," and just skimmed right over it. It seemed Dickens was trying to make it longer than it organically would have been because he was paid by the installment. Also, one of the characters was so "virtuous" I felt like she was a moron and I hated the mother of Nicholas Nickleby. She was supposed to be amusing and sometimes she was but mostly I just wanted someone to punch her in the face. But that's just my cynicism I suppose (I have had the same difficulty with Jane Austen characters at times) and is probably the result of looking at the situation through the prism of modern values/mores."

— Diane (4 out of 5 stars)