Title: Barnaby Rudge
Author: Charles Dickens
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 744
Rating: 4/5
Well, it’s time to crack on with reading all of Charles Dickens’ books, this time with Barnaby Rudge.
As before, I read this one via a Librivox audio book, and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of this one. I’ve picked up quite a few of these that were narrated by people who were clearly learning to speak English as a second language, whereas this one was narrated by a first-language speaker with a decent microphone and a knack for doing the voices. It wasn’t quite professional quality, but it also wasn’t far off it.
That added to my enjoyment of the book, but I think I would have liked reading this one regardless. To me, it’s one of Dickens’ better works, and it’s also a good reminder of why the guy had a reputation for social commentary. No one does it quite like our Charlie did, and I spent half of my reflection time wondering what he would have made of the society that we live in today.
Okay, so history lesson time. Barnaby Rudge is subtitled “A Tale of the Riots of Eighty”, because it’s set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots in 1780. I’m no history expert and so I won’t pretend to understand the full context, but it seems that the riots were to do with people not much liking the Catholics, culminating with people attacking Newgate Prison and the Bank of England. Wikipedia tells me that it was the most destructive riots in the history of London.
The fun thing about that is that it reminded me of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Hussites trilogy, mostly because it had historical elements around a period in time that I knew nothing about. However, there are other similarities, including the fact that both books have a wry sense of humour to them and plenty to say about the way that people treat one another.
A little more research taught me that this is one of only two historical novels that Dickens wrote, and the other one is A Tale of Two Cities. Because of that, I feel like this one tends to get overlooked by people, which is a shame because it’s easily in my top five so far. It’s atmospheric and immersive and has all of the elements that makes Dickens great, as well as one or two little extras.
One of the downsides of the book being so frequently overlooked is that there are no decent adaptations of it that I’m aware of, which is a shame. We already have definitive versions of most of my favourite Dickens works, so why not this one?
Perhaps one of the challenges is the huge cast of characters, which is so expansive that it was often difficult for me to remember who was who. Then there are people who sort of wander in and out of the story, including Barnaby Rudge himself, who essentially has a kind of learning disability and a friend that’s a raven. He reminded me of a homeless guy I saw in a YouTube video recently who’d befriended some of the pigeons in New York’s Central Park. He’d given them all names and everything.
Funnily enough, Rudge himself doesn’t necessarily play a huge role in the story line, or at least not to the extent that any of the other characters get left behind. Perhaps the most important thing about his character is the fact that he kept the raven called Grip, which was based upon a raven that Dickens himself kept as a pet. A chap called Edgar Allan Poe would later write an Edgar Allen Poem that was inspired by Grip, and you’ve probably heard of it.
Anyway, now it’s time to sum things up before you get bored and stop reading, something that Dickens does at just the right time. It’s a long old read, but it’s one where it’s worth investing the time because there’s plenty for you to take away from it.
As you can probably tell, I was a big fan of Barnaby Rudge, and I really do think that it’s a shame that there hasn’t been a decent adaptation of late. Maybe Netflix will read my review and give it a shot, because this is in the public domain now and so they wouldn’t have to pay for the rights.
Read it.
