'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' by Mark Haddon

Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, for fifteen-year-old Christopher everyday interactions and admonishments have little meaning. He lives on patterns, rules, and a diagram kept in his pocket. Then one day, a neighbor's dog, Wellington, is killed and his carefully constructive universe is threatened. Christopher sets out to solve the murder in the style of his favourite (logical) detective, Sherlock Holmes. What follows makes for a novel that is funny, poignant and fascinating in its portrayal of a person whose curse and blessing are a mind that perceives the world entirely literally.

MY THOUGHTS: 

This book is celebrated as an inventive and original prizewinner with rave reviews, so I grabbed it when I saw it on a free book table, even though I was cautious about a story with a murdered dog. Violence and cruelty to animals is no draw card for me, but at least it's clear this dog is already dead at the start. 

Christopher Boone is a 15-year-old who discovers his neighbour's poodle, Wellington, lying dead with a pitchfork through his flank. Grieved and upset because he likes dogs too, Christopher decides to record his process in writing as he tracks down the killer.

Although he's highly intelligent with logic and mathematics, Christopher knows this will be a challenge for him, because he thinks differently from others. He cherishes order above all and can't stand change. He has a photographic memory but can't filter details, so reaches the point of TMI incredibly fast, and has extreme reactions that stretch his carers' capacity skills to the limit. He finds it difficult to relate to others because he can't read their feelings and emotions. And the concept of a sense of humour bewilders him, because the subtlety and nuances of dialogue has always eluded him. 

I really wanted to enjoy this read, but didn't quite get there. 

Have you ever settled down for a light-hearted evening with one of those movies that are touted as comedies, but end up having some heavy, tear-jerking agenda that depresses you instead? This book let me down in a similar way. It's not that anything is wrong except for misleading advertising. It's irritating when we don't get the story we trust we've committed several hours to. In this case, based on the title, blurb, and darkly comic cover, I expected a whimsical mystery about an Aspy teen who manages to solve a crime by piecing together random clues which other people miss. And I expected they'd be dropped at intervals throughout the story. But what we actually end up getting is a very angsty drama about Christopher and his dysfunctional family, with one melt-down after another from various characters with no satisfying resolution.

So I feel it's fair to warn other mystery enthusiasts at the outset that Christopher finds no actual clues in his sleuthing at all, and Wellington's killer is revealed way early on. I actually guessed who it would be. This book has a small cast of characters so it's not that difficult, but I'd hoped the culprit would come up with a far better excuse! The circumstances and motivation do this person no credit.

Another irritation is Christopher's dismissive attitude toward certain concepts he can't wrap his mind around, which feel like they're coming from the author Mark Haddon as much as from the boy himself. Like several other logic dominated people I've come across, Christopher scoffs at things he can't understand, such as heaven and the supernatural. He ridicules people who choose faith as a guiding factor in their lives, and basically calls them deluded idiots. Anything way off his radar is dismissed as foolish, non-existent, or something that will surely be dissected thoroughly under the microscopes of the future. People like Chris (and I assume Haddon) would surely shake their heads if anyone suggested that a God small enough to wrap our heads around wouldn't be much of a God. 

Finally, the main adults in Christopher's life aren't particularly admirable, and often come across as self-focused and unwilling to accept curve balls in their lives without a load of griping. Even his father Ed, who's probably most committed, has issues with instability and poor decision making. I know they're under a lot of stress, but it doesn't make for an enjoyable read.   

I'm guessing Mark Haddon's main reason for writing it is to give readers a rare glimpse into the headspace of someone with high functioning autism, so that we can empathise with what they must go through every day. All the puzzled misunderstanding of speech that most others seem to get instantly. The weird looks and rude reactions from people who in turn don't understand that your thinking loops are wired differently. The overwhelming anxiety over stimuli which is pooh-poohed by others but extremely real to you. Based on many other reviews, he pulled it off super successfully, but I still would have preferred it if he and his publishing team had been upfront with all this, rather than leading us to believe it's a mystery story. 

It's a highly readable book and full of interesting trivia, so deserves three stars rather than two, but overall, it wasn't my cup of tea. 

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'The Bird the Sang in Color' by Grace Mattioli

Official blurb: Part family drama and part self-actualization story, this is about Donna Greco, who in her teens, subscribes to a conventional view of success in life—and pushes her freewheeling, artistic brother, Vincent to do the same. However, he remains single, childless, and subsists in cramped apartments. She harbors guilt for her supposed failure until she discovers a sketch-book he’d made of his life, which prompts her own journey to live authentically.

MY THOUGHTS:

Wow, I enjoy books that get us pondering the nature of happiness and fulfillment. Although non-fiction ones are great, fiction about the subject really tends to drive its message home, and this is one of them.  

It's told in first person by a driven young woman named Donna Tucci, who manages to tick all the dreams off her bucket list over time. This includes marriage to her sweetheart Frank Greco, having a family of four kids (two girls and two boys no less) and becoming an English professor. She observes from a young age that materialism, hard work, relationships and success seem to earn happiness and nods of approval, so goes flat out for it. 

Meanwhile, Donna is convinced that her talented older brother Vincent is living the life of a fall-short. He appears to be perpetually lonely and broke, letting himself down as a result of not ticking the boxes society smiles upon. Why does he keep working in jobs below his intelligence level and failing to take the bait on lucrative opportunities? It takes years of fortune reversals and angst for her to consider that maybe Vincent's approach to living had some value and wisdom after all. The gradual disintegration of Donna's marriage to Frank is extremely well told. He's a keyed-up high court judge with a drinking problem that he flatly denies. 

The story's themes are loud and clear, which they should be, since we of the western world need to hear them whether or not we know it. It's all about being careful who we label a loser, and examining the unconscious criteria we use. It even gets us questioning whether it's possible to misread someone's signals that they're unhappy, based on our own firm convictions. Overall, it's a great, affirming story for those 'satisficers' of the world, who resist subtle pressure to shape up to cookie-cutter ideals. For someone's idea of settling may be another person's way of living their best, most creative life. 

This story also introduces Donna and Frank's kids; beautiful but depressive Angie, brilliant but unmotivated Cosmo, artistic but restless Silvia, and high-principled but slightly fanatical Vince. These four feature strongly in the other two books of the Greco family trilogy, which are hard to put down once you start. Although each can be read as stand-alones, I find it impossible not to read all three back to back and immerse myself in the tricky and messy psychology of a dysfunctional family unit. They're written with so much heart.  

Highly recommended for anyone who's come to see that reaching for the stars may be overrated, or at least a different kettle of fish for different people. 

Disclaimer: Thanks to the author for sending me a copy to review. All my opinions are genuine and honest.  

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Which Character Would you Save?

 One of the hazards of immersing ourselves in great books is the occasional fictional death that rocks us to our very depths. It's understandable that these should hit us hard, for within the pages of stories we gain more access to the deep inner workings of people's hearts than we do with many of our flesh and blood friends. But at these tearful moments our real life friends and family may shake their heads and laugh while we try to hide how deeply grieved we feel over the loss of a fictional friend. 

If you're like me, every so often someone may ask which character you'd choose to save if you had the power to prevent any single literary death. That's a harsh question to put to a bookworm, since we spread our nets of love extremely wide. In all honestly, narrowing it down to one would be an impossible task for me. So it's probably a good thing that this sudden power is merely hypothetical. 

But here's a list of a dozen of my contenders, in no particular order. I'd probably save each of these in a flash if I could. (Oh by the way, naturally there will be spoilers, so tread carefully.)

1) Dobby

How hard it is to see a courageous character slaughtered straight on the heels of performing a mighty rescue deed. The little house elf with the enormous heart had just saved several prisoners from the dungeon of Malfoy Manor, where they would have been finished off by Lord Voldemort. Among them was the Golden Trio; Harry, Ron and Hermione. The manner in which Rowling wrote of Dobby's plaintive expression and hand stretched to Harry just before he expired wrenched tears from my son when I read it to him. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if Dobby was his choice. 

2) Fred Weasley 

I'd love to save this bright and humorous boy for the sake of his brother. To lose an identical twin who was always on his wavelength, sharing in his mischief and being his business partner must have been an unbearable blow for poor George. So if we could spare Fred from this list, would we?

3) Matthew Cuthbert

Oh no, not good old modest, hard-working Matthew who was brimming with love for his orphan girl, Anne! It was such a sudden loss too, as he suffers a fatal heart-attack after reading bad financial news about his bank. I once read that Montgomery herself regretted the decision to kill off Matthew, but by then, it was too late. She'd already committed the deed, and now the trauma of his loss keeps devastating fresh generations of readers. Since the author had a change of heart, would you choose Matthew to save? (Incidentally, the writers of the Anne with an E Netflix series answered yes to that one. Reckless canon-changers are always hard at work.) 

4) Walter Blythe

Goodness, this time it's Anne's brilliant and beautiful second son. He dies a soldier's death in the First World War at the age of 22. Walter was already a celebrity poet with plenty more genius up his sleeve to release on the world, but never gets the chance. Interestingly, years down the track, Anne confides in her older son, Jem, that it might have been a blessing his brother didn't live to see the aftermath of the War, as his sensitive soul would never have recovered. This adds some conflict to the question. Would you let Walter live, or was his death the most merciful thing for him after all? (See my review of Rilla of Ingleside)

5) Ravi Patel

You might be scratching your head, asking, 'Who?' He was a side character in Life of Pi , being the main character's light-hearted older brother. Ravi used to tease his brother, Piscene, for the eclectic variety of religions he adhered to. He was a keen cricket player and sunny-natured individual. Just the sort of person we hate to see go down with a sinking ship. And if only he woke up when his brother shook him to check out the weird lurching, he might have survived. Ravi's death touched me deeply, especially when I saw Pi grieving not just his brother, but the loss of the sister-in-law, nephews and nieces he now felt cheated out of ever having. 

6) Beth March

Surely we all agree that doers of good deeds shouldn't suffer sickness and death as a consequence of their kindness. What sort of karma is that? The shy little March sister was nursing a neighbour's sick baby when she contracted the scarlet fever that eventually killed her. Beth left a gaping hole in the lives of her family. Would you save her if you could? Keep in mind, this story is rooted in reality, as Louisa May Alcott's beloved sister Elizabeth, on whom Beth was based, died in similar circumstances. So perhaps Beth's fate was Louisa's way of expressing grief for her real life sister and memorialising her. Do we really want to mess with that? (See my review of Good Wives, Part 2 of Little Women)

7) Augustine St. Clare

This young man was my favourite character from Uncle Tom's Cabin. He was Tom's kindest master, the father of the saintly Little Eva, and a firm believer in the abolishment of slavery. Augustine was on the brink of making a bold stand for universal freedom when he was killed in a freak street fight. To me, his fate had 'Cruel Plot Device' stamped all over it, making way for Tom to be sold to the despicable Simon Legree. I hate it when great characters die, but even more so when it's written with the intention of having our rugs viciously pulled out from beneath us. (His daughter could also be on this list, but I kept her off because in the long run, Eva was one of those too-good-for-this-world characters who probably pine for heaven from the moment they're born. Overall, I'd prefer to save her dad.)

8) Rawdon Crawley

He's the kind of honest young general who takes things on face value, and has the misfortune to fall in love with fortune-hunter Becky Sharp. Rawdon's life took a downward spiral from the moment he married her. Not only was he disowned by the aunt who would have left him her fortune, but the wife he became a pauper for cheated on him over and over. I find it hard to forgive Thackeray for letting Rawdon die of yellow fever, all alone in his new post in the tropics, instead of writing in some compensation for him. The fate of poor Rawdon might have been true to life, but sometimes we yearn for books to transcend life. I would have loved to save Rawdon, for his own sake and that of his beloved young son. (See my review of Vanity Fair)

9) Sydney Carton

Wow, this brave and compassionate soul goes willingly to the guillotine for the sake of the woman he loves and her family. He plays on his strong resemblance to her husband to set up a case of mistaken identity and save an innocent man. Anyone who could pull off such a noble, self-sacrificing action deserves to live a long, happy life. If only Dickens wrote in some loophole to save both young men, but the story wouldn't have packed a fraction of the same punch if he did. Even I, a staunch Sydney Carton fan, can see that. But would you overlook the tragic beauty of this tale and save him anyway? (See my review of A Tale of Two Cities)

10) Tom Robinson

He's the deeply wronged coloured man who was falsely accused of raping a young white woman, when in actual fact he was simply being a courteous neighbour. Defence lawyer extraordinaire Atticus Finch goes to great lengths to prove Tom's innocence, compromising his own family's safety and reputation in the process. It's such a blow for good characters and good readers all round when Tom dies anyway. There is a certain inevitably about his fate from the moment Mayella Ewell opens her mouth to scream the lie that makes this book unforgettable. But would you save Tom anyway?

11) Petya Rostov

I'd save young Petya's life for his poor mother's sake. He's a young teenager, still wet behind the ears, who wants to join the Russian forces in the war against Napoleon and be a hero. Petya doesn't have a complete grasp of what he's jumping into, but impulsively leaps in anyway and pays the ultimate price. Many young men have a chance to learn from their mistakes, but not this one, and I so wish he did. His mother's over-protective heart and intense fear that this would happen to her beloved youngest baby sticks in my mind. My heart aches for her, because I'm a fellow mother of boys, and because it did happen! Oh Countess Rostov, I would have saved him for you if I could. (See my review of War & Peace)

12) Judy Woolcot

I'm adding this one for my mother-in-law, who is in her seventies and states that she never recovered from reading Seven Little Australians as a child. You can understand why, when the most beloved main character is crushed close to the end of the book by a falling tree. We have a mischievous, original, kind and spirited heroine wiped out in an instant. Ethel Turner, how could you do that to your loyal readers, who are only children themselves? Authors are meant to be ambassadors for reading books, but it would not surprise me if this one caused several impressionable kids to never pick up another novel. I've left this example until last because it's probably as shocking and tragic as it gets. You won't find a review of this book on my blog because I refuse to pick it up for a re-read myself.

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Okay, do any of these strike a chord with you too? What I notice as I skim my eye down is that they were all young (with the exception of Matthew) and their demises were so untimely. Please tell us in the comments which broke your heart most, and feel free to add any examples of your own, which might have us striking our foreheads and saying, 'Of course!'           

'The Magician's Nephew' by C.S. Lewis

Or 'The One with the Apple'

Welcome to my read-along of the Narnia series. Although I try to keep them to a minimum, I won't promise to consistently dodge plot spoilers, especially when discussing my impressions of the books this time round. But I consider old classics are fair game and hope you'll join me anyway. 

Here's the book about the founding of a magical land. It's focused on the people present to witness the creation of Narnia, when the majestic Lion Aslan breathes life into its dense nothingness. The start of the story claims it will explain how the portal between our world and Narnia came to be, and indeed it delivers.

But we begin with the first of the series' boy/girl duos grounded firmly on earth. Digory Kirke and his ailing mother go to live with Aunt Letty and Uncle Andrew in London. Everyone expects Mrs Kirke will die before long, which grieves Digory to his core. He makes friends with Polly Plummer, the girl next door, and together they decide to explore their row of attached houses via the roof cavity. They accidentally burst into the studio of eccentric Uncle Andrew, an aspiring magician who's too chicken to explore the far-off place he's sourced (which turns out to be a sort of woodsy outdoor foyer between worlds). But he has no qualms about tricking the two kids into casing out the mysterious realm on his behalf. It's far more than Polly and Digory bargain for, and Uncle Andrew discovers that after all his sneakiness, he can't expect to dodge payback forever. 

What I appreciated even more than before.

1) Okay, we aren't ever told, but I'm estimating the time period in London to be around the late 1800s. Digory was the young boy who grows up to become Professor Kirke in the WW2 era. If he's around 11, that might put him in his fifties or early sixties for the next book. Parts of the London Underground were still being built, and rather than driving a car, Frank the cabbie had a horse-drawn hansom cab, which were running until 1908. And the clothing mentioned and shown in illustrations seems to be a remnant of the era, including Digory's Norfolk jacket. This sort of sleuthing is fun.

2) I love Uncle Andrew! Not the guy himself, but the way he was written. He has such Albert Einstein/Jerry Lewis professor vibes, even though he's essentially clueless, or just knowledgeable enough to make him dangerous. And he quickly shows himself to be an unscrupulous con man with an entrepreneurial heart of the tackiest kind. 

3) Digory did it!!! My word, we all know Harry Potter is called 'The Boy who Lived', and in this series, Digory is 'The Boy who Did It.' That's what Aslan calls him, and it isn't complimentary. Digory wasn't deliberately setting out to cause major trouble for the whole world. His was basically the same character flaw as Pandora's and Eve's. He chooses to give in to inquisitiveness and temptation. I guess it's refreshing to see Lewis give this role to a male instead of yet another female. But oh man, Digory, look at what your nosiness unleashed!

4) Polly is a careful, sensible girl. She's more cautious than Digory, yet this comes across as grounded and level headed rather than anxious or cowardly. She's a refreshing straight-talker too. We need more people who aren't afraid to be blunt and say it like it is. Go Polly!

5) The two most villainous characters have the same basic attitude. They both long to make names for themselves, dominate their worlds and make huge splashes. They even drop similar lines to the effect that they consider themselves exempt from the moral codes that apply to lesser beings. That's scary stuff.

6) I love the sound of the Wood between the Worlds, with its slow and soothing atmosphere of gentle growth. I'd love to go and rest there for a long time. I think I might choose it as a destination over any of the lands it leads to.

7) Frank the cabbie is a legend. He's just a nice guy who's humbly doing his work to the best of his ability and earning an honest wage. I had a ride from a friendly chap like him in a black cab in 1990, and like to think that London cabbies come from a strong tradition of decent men from generations back. His role in this story is to show that normal dudes may possess regal, kingly potential that surprises even themselves. I love his horse Strawberry too.  

8) Everyone's responses to Aslan's wonderful song and the burgeoning world seem to match their characters. I've no doubt I would have been blown away in the same reverential manner as Digory, Polly and Frank, so hopefully that signifies my heart is sound too. However, I'm sure others would say exactly the same. Are we honestly to believe that misguided or dodgy readers would respond with repugnance to Lewis' written descriptions in the manner of Jadis and Andrew? Hardly likely! I doubt there are many truly villainous readers out there. And I guess you really had to be there on the spot.  

9) You can't pull the wool over Aslan's penetrating eyes with plausible sounding excuses you might even fool yourself with. Digory finds this out. In Aslan's presence, you have to face up to yourself as you truly are. The book doesn't attempt to describe the origin of the mighty Lion of Narnia, but indeed it can't be expected to.  

10) We do get to see the origins of Narnia's talking animals, the great wardrobe and also the lamp post beside which Lucy famously meets Mr Tumnus in the next book.   

What I wasn't a fan of this time round. 

I'll pass, this time. It's a neat, straightforward little fantasy, and nothing stood out to bother me.

Some Great Quotes

Digory: You're simply a wicked, cruel magician like the ones in the stories. Well, I've never read a story in which people of that sort weren't paid out in the end, and I bet you will be. (Haha, and was he ever!)

Polly: We might as well leave the guinea pig. It's perfectly happy here, and your uncle will only do something horrid to it if we take it home. (If my dear little guinea pig had still been with us, he would have been in my photo for sure.)

Polly: It's a good thing one of us has some sense. 

Digory: It's because you're a girl. Girls never want to know anything but gossip and rot about people getting engaged. (Oh, you're treading dangerous ground, Digs.)

Aslan: Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. 

Aslan: Length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery, and already she begins to know it. All get what they want. They do not always like it. 

Aslan: Before you are an old man and an old woman, great nations in your world will be ruled by tyrants. (Lewis is putting these words in Aslan's mouth in retrospect, but it still packs a powerful punch.)

And the crux of the whole story for me... imagine a drum roll... 

'The memory of that moment stayed with them always, so that as long as they both lived, if ever they were sad or afraid or angry, the thought of all that golden goodness and the feeling that it was still there, quite close, just around some corner or just behind some door, would come back and make them sure, deep down inside, that all was well.' 

Stick around, because next up will be The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  

'A Tale of Two Cities' by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’s great historical novel, set against the violent upheaval of the French Revolution. The most famous and perhaps the most popular of his works, it compresses an event of immense complexity to the scale of a family history, with a cast of characters that includes a bloodthirsty ogress and an antihero as believably flawed as any in modern fiction.

MY THOUGHTS: 

Note: Occasionally there's a story that's super hard to review, because if you can't give spoilers, it's impossible to do justice to the heart of it. So for this beauty I've decided to provide a very clear red middle line. Anything above it is spoiler free. But below that line, I'll send caution to the wind and ramble about crucial plot points.  

This is my choice for the 19th Century Classic category of this year's Back to the Classics Challenge. I promised a few commenters after my review of Bleak House that this would be my next Dickens novel. I'm so glad they spoke up for it, because the story is a winner for me. It's a perfect sandwich between a notoriously famous opening line and a stirringly triumphant closing line. What a top notch doppelganger yarn and equally riveting French Revolution story it is. 

It starts when 18-year-old Lucie Manette discovers that her father, who she'd never met, has just been freed from prison in France. He'd been unjustly incarcerated all her life. Dr Manette is a trembling wreck whose spirit has been practically decimated by PTSD. Lucie nurses him back to health, but the Dr will never divulge anything about the circumstances that landed him in jail. However, something about the young man his daughter falls in love with causes a sudden relapse. But it takes the intrigue of the French revolution to unearth all that's been hushed up for years. 

Nothing quite beats the faux-immediacy of a well-told tale that puts us right in the picture of something that happened over 300 years ago. We're directly beside characters in the thick of turmoil, including a blow-by-blow description of the storming of the Bastille. Dickens describes this era of history with a bloodthirstiness some of his other novels miss out on. Nobody does social commentary quite like him, and I've got to say he's impartial. Some of his aristocrats are appalling (looking at you, Marquis St Evremonde), yet some of his revolutionaries are equally abhorrent (my gosh, Madame Defarge!). I think Dickens aims to show that a national attempt to correct a major wrong may swing the pendulum way too far in the opposite direction, resulting in a new ideology that's just as oppressive and unjust as the first.

In Paris is Madame Defarge, who turns knitting into a menacing occupation. She's like a trapdoor spider, patiently working her thread until her victims are near, before zooming in for the kill. She's a heartless woman who's all for revolution, and eventually a deeper personal reason for her ferocious fervour comes to light. Even in the case of a villain like Madame Defarge, the hatred that drives her turns out to be based on long-ago love that's festered, showing there's a fine line between the two. She knows retribution is best when it has time to marinade, and during this story her time ripens.  

At the heart of the story is a pair of doppelgangers who fascinate me, appearing first at the age of about 25. Charles Darnay is the nephew of a corrupt aristocrat, and wants to discard the shackles of his family's brutal legacy and start over fresh with nothing. But he discovers it's hard to shake your roots clean of inherited dirt. His mirror image, Sydney Carton, is an unfettered orphan and morose loner who can't pin his restless nature down to care much about anything. Except for Lucie Manette, who both young look-alikes are in love with. (I'll say more about this charismatic duo below the middle line.) 

The two cities of the title make me think of a game of Chasey. London is home base, where you're safe, while Paris is that danger zone, where you run around if you dare. The demands for meticulous political correctness in both places put me in mind of our era, except that at least we don't get killed for speaking out of turn. Even in comparatively safe London, it's not difficult to get an innocent guy tried for treason. 

And at least in our 21st century culture, innocent children are no longer executed for the sins of their fathers.  

THE MIDDLE LINE - If you don't want plot spoilers, please read no further. If you already know the story or don't mind big revelations, I'll be discussing some of the juiciest bits. 

1) Are there any Harry Potter fans? Doesn't that final awesome showdown between Miss Pross and Madame Defarge remind you of Molly Weasley and Bellatrix Lestrange? Miss Pross is not Lucie's biological mother but shes' been her governess and long-term companion since childhood and has the same fierce maternal instinct. You almost expect her to shout, 'Not my daughter, you bitch!' It's satisfying to see a Mama Bear character win the day again, although I would have loved it if Madame Defarge discovered how her vicious plan was thwarted.  

2) I love it that Dr Manette took Charles Darnay to his heart as a son-in-law, knowing full well that Charles' father and uncle were the degenerate wretches who ruined his own life. His warm heart was poles apart from Madame Defarge's, who made it her mission to exterminate Darnay and everyone dear to him for a similar reason. When you think about it, that father/son by marriage relationship speaks volumes about the sterling characters of both the Doctor and Charles himself. 

3) Okay, those doppelgangers tear me up! It took brilliant, balanced writing from Dickens to set such an emotional conflict in our readers' hearts. Part of me was urging Carton, 'Yeah, you go, boy, you can pull this off!' while the other half was crying, 'Sydney, nooooo!'

 The bottom line is we don't want either of them to die. Darnay is a conscience led, kind-hearted young husband and dad with everything to live for, and it's unthinkable that he should face the guillotine for the crimes of his father and uncle. He's obviously the perfect spouse for Lucie and we want them to be together. Yet Carton is a whiz kid and a legend with oodles of potential, if only he can face his personal demons. Perhaps he was battling some sort of bipolar disorder. His friend Stryver calls him, 'Seesaw Sydney; up one minute and down the next.'  

If Darnay had been any less a hero, the story wouldn't work because we'd regret the wasted sacrifice Sydney made. Yet if Carton wasn't such a lovable, compassionate person, it would be easy for us to consider him the more expendable of the pair, just as he did himself. Another reviewer once wrote that in her opinion, this Dickens story has the 'sexiest hero' but didn't say whether she meant Carton or Darnay. In my opinion, you can't possibly choose one over the other. Together they deliver us a double dose of awesomeness. 

To me, the ending deserves a standing ovation. It's such a triumph. Madame Defarge's wicked quest for vengeance was thwarted, and the one who stopped her hand considered it the best thing he'd ever done with his life, even though it was the final act. Maybe Sydney's incredibly courageous sacrifice is enough to make this my new favourite Dickens novel. The more I think about it, the more it seems he made one of the most breathtaking gestures not just in this book but in all of literature. 

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