David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - ★★★★.½

AUTHOR: Charles Dickens

NARRATOR: Martin Jarvis

GENRE: Coming-of-Age, Classic.

RATING: 4.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: Still remains my favourite Dickens work, though middle-aged-me found more flaws in it than teen-me did. If you are a classics lover, this ought to be on your read list at least for its impeccable character development.

In many ways, this was a reread for me, but strictly speaking, this is my first read of the complete and unabridged work.

During my childhood years, the classics were an inevitable part of my life, primarily because of my school who added a variety of classics to our agenda. No full-length tomes were forced upon us. Rather, we were given abridged versions of works by classic giants ranging from Mark Twain to Anthony Hope, George Eliot (whom I had assumed to be a man!!) to Johann David Wyss. Because of these relatively thinner, illustrated volumes, I never felt overwhelmed by the writing style and enjoyed the large-than-life stories.

A few years ago, I decided to read the unabridged versions of my favourite old titles. Of all the abridged classics I read in my tween years, David Copperfield had the top spot on my list of favourites (sharing the #1 rank with Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.”) So you can guess why I am so happy today. After all these years, I have finally read the unabridged version of this lovely story!

What I hadn’t realised before that this is an example of character-driven fiction. But today, I see how impressive the character sketching is in this novel. Right from the major game-changers to the minor fleeting appearances, every single character is given enough flesh and bone so as to make us know them in and out the minute they make their appearance on the page.

It was so wonderful to take a relook at my favourite characters after nearly three decades. I had loved and continue to love Peggotty, Betsey Trotwood, Mr. Dick, Mr. Micawber, Tommy Traddles, Mr. Peggotty, and the dearest-of-all Agnes Wickfield. My opinion about all of these remains the same even after knowing them in greater detail. (My opinion of the ‘umble Uriah Heep also stays unchanged – I continue to abhor him, probably at an enhanced level.) On the contrary, my feelings for James Steerforth, Little Emily, and Dora Spenlow are altered, but not due to Dickens’ fault. I hadn’t known that my abridged school-time copy had provided a picture-perfect depiction of these characters, chopping out whatever cast grey shades on their personality or took a negative turn in their story. Seeing their actual portrayal was heartbreaking, especially when it came to Steerforth because I just didn’t expect that strong a villainous angle to come up in his arc.

You might be wondering why the eponymous character is missing from the above list. That’s simply because I have now seen David in a myriad new ways, and am hence undecided about whether to like him or not. As this is his coming-of-age story, it is a treat to see him grow from the shy lad to a confident man who knows what he wants only when others . But as I have the advantage of now being older than David, I see just how many times he is quick to jump to conclusions, how blind he is to the flaws of those he loves, and how he follows his heart without taking advice from his head. He is quite judgemental and more than a little snooty. All these factors make him an exceptional titular character, but not necessarily a likeable one.

Honestly, I value my abridged copy even more now because it expertly cut out whatever was extraneous and outdated without altering the core story. In other words, it retained the best of Dickens’ characters and chucked out the worst. My old copy had eliminated not just certain sad incidents but also all offensive elements such as the portrayal of the dwarf character, the silly tendency to equate looks with virtue, and the outdated, misogynistic comments. That said, I am not going to hold these shortcomings against the full-length version because this book was first published in 1850. That’s the social mentality Dickens lived with, and that’s the readership Dickens wrote for, not for modern-day “woke” mortals who believe that they know more than the author himself about how he should have written this work almost 175 years ago.

If you haven’t yet read this book and are fond of classics, I would definitely recommend this tome to you. After all, you would know how to read classics in the right spirit – without getting all twenty-first century-judgemental about it.

I'm not going to claim that this is the best Charles Dickens work, because there are still many I've not read, but of the ones I've read, this was the dearest to my heart, and will continue to be so.

Not changing my original rating because… you know… nostalgia.

Audiobook listeners: A great way of checking out this tome would be to hear the 34 hrs 33 minutes version narrated by Martin Jarvis. What a performance! Every single character gets a life of their own through his exceptional performance. Best of all, this audiobook is free for all Audible members (Even if you aren’t a subscriber, just use your Amazon account credentials to log in to Audible US and check out the ‘Free Listens’ section. You’ll find this gem there.)