A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities is a thoroughly enjoyable story, with enough action and colour to keep the modern reader entertained.  Highly recommended for those who don't mind stepping outside their own contemporary culture from time to time for some good old-fashioned story-telling.

This novel was first published in 1859 and is set in the years leading up to and immediately following the French Revolution in 1789.  

It tells the tale of Charles Darnay, a French aristocrat who has renounced his patrimony, and his look-alike Sydney Carton, an Englishman who has dissipated his money and talents on alcohol.  Their stories are bound up with those of Dr Manette and his daughter Lucie. The action switches back and forth between a staid and conservative London and a Paris caught up in revolutionary turmoil.

The novel is a brief one by Dickens' standards.  Even so, Dickens is able to tell a tangled tale of intrigue, deceit, loyalty and redemption against a well-drawn historical backdrop. The action rarely flags, and new developments come thick and fast.

Also unlike many of Dickens' stories, most of the characters in A Tale of Two Cities have an interesting psychological depth to them, rather than being stock characters.  Assisting the main actors are Mr Jarvis Lorry, who hides his compassionate nature behind the thin veneer of a dispassionate businessman; the tough and gruff Jerry Cruncher who is an errand runner by day and a resurrection man by night; Monsieur and Madame DeFarge who run an underground revolutionary movement from their Paris tavern; and then there is the poor peasant Gaspard, who suffers a grievous outrage at the hands of the French aristocracy.

I thoroughly enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities.  I read the Penguin Classics eBook version, which contains a very informative introductory essay by Richard Maxwell.