Our Mutual Friend (Modern Library Classics)

Our Mutual Friend (Modern Library Classics)
by Charles Dickens

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Book Summary Information

Author: Charles Dickens
Introduction: Richard Gaughan
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-09-10
ISBN: 0375761144
Number of pages: 880
Publisher: Modern Library

Book Reviews of Our Mutual Friend (Modern Library Classics)

Book Review: Down by the river, up from the river
Summary: 5 Stars

The last completed novel by Dickens is also one of the darkest and, in my opinion, one of the best. The plot, as usual, is too dense and complex to be treatd here in detail. The story centers around one John Harmon, back from abroad to claim the inheritance from his deceased, horrible, and miser of a father. For reasons that are never explained (one of the several loose ends of the book), Old Harmon had set the condition that, in order for his son to receive the inheritance, he must marry a young, poor girl called Bella Wilfer, whom young Harmon had never met. One night, a guy whose trade was to recover things -and bodies- from the fetid Thames, along with his daughter, finds a corpse, which is later identified as that of John Harmon. Mysterious characters appear to have an interest in the affair, but the fact is that, missing the first-choice heir, the fortune must go to the Boffins, long time employees of Old Harmon. By the way, Old Harmon's source of fortune is a very strange one: he was a Dustman, apparently someone who trades in garbage and other discarded objects. The Boffins are an old, childless, good, charming, and ignorant couple. Feeling sorry for the death of beloved Johnny, and owing to a sense of reparation, they practically adopt Bella Wilfer. They also hire as their secretary an old tenant of the Wilfers, the mysterious John Rokesmith, who falls in love with the arrogant and pretentious Bella.

What follows is a mad, symphonic, convoluted tale of ambition, corruption, passion, crime, and revenge, as well as of confused identities. All in a tone of farce and black -but very funny- humor. Dickens paints his very own London, dark, wet, fetid, inhuman. The characters travel up and down the Thames, through St. James, the Temple, the City, etc., crossing time and again the dangerous river. They come and go all the time. The two young ladies, Bella and Lizzie Hexam, the daughter of the man who first recovered the body, are subject to mad passions, especially the latter. There are dozens of subplots, all worth reading. Dickens mocks just about every kind of people in London: business, politics, social habits. Most characters are mean and ridiculous. The vividness of the situations is witness to the enormous creative powers of this great writer.

Thre are too many characters to sketch them all here, but some memorable ones are: Miss Jenny Wren ("I know your tricks and your manners"), the dolls' dressmaker, smart, cynical, penetrating, beautiful and handicapped, as well as her pathetic drunkard of a father. Silas Wegg, "a man of letters and with a wooden leg", a sinister rascal who tries to dispossess the Boffins through blackmail, and his associate, Mr. Venus, embalmer and taxidermist, always sitting in his dark parlour, surrounded by phaetuses in bottles. Bradley Headstone, who literally gets crazy about Lizzie. Rogue Riderhood, the common criminal of the Thames. The most outrageous one is an usurer, a petulant and despicable pseudo-dandy called Fascination Fledgeby.

It's true: in contrast with most great writers of the XIX Century, Dickens does not create human beings. He creates cartoons. In fact, at least for me, some passages of the novel are more easily imagined as cartoons than as people. But, as Anthony Burgess put it, "Language and morality add dimensions to his cartoons and turn them into literature". This is an enormously funny book, well worth your dedication through its many pages. Some people criticize him for leaving subplots open and for not tying it all up close circle. Who cares, his power with words is extraordinary and his landscape of characters unforgettable.

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Summary of Our Mutual Friend (Modern Library Classics)

A satiric masterpiece about the allure and peril of money, Our Mutual Friend revolves around the inheritance of a dust-heap where the rich throw their trash. When the body of John Harmon, the dust-heap?s expected heir, is found in the Thames, fortunes change hands surprisingly, raising to new heights ?Noddy? Boffin, a low-born but kindly clerk who becomes ?the Golden Dustman.? Charles Dickens?s last complete novel, Our Mutual Friend encompasses the great themes of his earlier works: the pretensions of the nouveaux riches, the ingenuousness of the aspiring poor, and the unfailing power of wealth to corrupt all who crave it. With its flavorful cast of characters and numerous subplots, Our Mutual Friend is one of Dickens?s most complex?and satisfying?novels.

Our Mutual Friend was the last novel Charles Dickens completed and is, arguably, his darkest and most complex. The basic plot is vintage Dickens: an inheritance up for grabs, a murder, a rocky romance or two, plenty of skullduggery, and a host of unforgettable secondary characters. But in this final outing the author's heroes are more flawed, his villains more sympathetic, and the story as a whole more harrowing and less sentimental. The mood is set in the opening scene in which a riverman, Gaffer Hexam, and his daughter Lizzie troll the Thames searching for drowned men whose pockets Gaffer will rifle before turning the body over to the authorities. On this particular night Gaffer finds a corpse that is later identified as that of John Harmon, who was returning from abroad to claim a large fortune when he was apparently murdered and thrown into the river.

Harmon's death is the catalyst for everything else that happens in the novel. It seems the fortune was left to the young man on the condition that he marry a girl he'd never met, Bella Wilfer. His death, however, brings a new heir onto the scene, Nicodemus Boffin, the kind-hearted but low-born assistant to Harmon's father. Boffin and his wife adopt young Bella, who is determined to marry money, and also hire a mysterious young secretary, John Rokesmith, who takes an uncommon interest in their ward. Not content with just one plot, Dickens throws in a secondary love story featuring the riverman's daughter, Lizzie Hexam; a dissolute young upper-class lawyer, Eugene Wrayburn; and his rival, the headmaster Bradley Headstone. Dark as the novel is, Dickens is careful to leaven it with secondary characters who are as funny as they are menacing--blackmailing Silas Wegg and his accomplice Mr. Venus, the avaricious Lammles, and self-centered Charlie Hexam. Our Mutual Friend is one of Dickens's most satisfying novels, and a fitting denouement to his prolific career. --Alix Wilber

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