David Copperfield

I reread this novel prior to reading Barbara Kingsolver's take on it in her Pulitzer Prize winning Demon Copperhead. David Copperfield is a stunningly rich novel on every level. It is world building by a master. In essence, the good characters in this novel help one another; the bad prey upon one another. Sound familiar?

I’ve read it multiple times and also listened to an audiobook. Of course, there are movies, too. I read it on my own out of pure interest as a young woman and then again repeatedly as an adult.

I get wildly involved in Dickens’ plots. (Most of his novels would fulfill my category of children overcoming odds.) David is bereft, having lost his father. He has a loving but weak mother. He experiences beatings, hunger (Oh, I hate hunger), and loneliness as he is tossed about the world. And yet he never loses his humanity, that is, his native kindness.… show more.

This was Dickens’s personal favorite of all his books. It’s so good it makes me remember parts of my childhood–sensations, thoughts, feelings–I’d long forgotten. My wife and I read it to each other at bedtime, about five pages a night.

It’s pretty sophisticated prose, but I bet a kid as young as five could get into it in the same way they can enjoy someone reading Harry Potter books to them.

There’s something reassuring about how long the book is, too. You’ll want Dickens to keep telling you this story night after night.

The book is about David Copperfield’s life from childhood to adulthood. 

The story paints a bleak picture of childhood in Victorian England, and of young Copperfield slowly improving his chances and circumstances, continuing his studies while he is struggling to provide for his aunt. Once again, having had similar experiences in my own life, it had struck a chord.

I almost feel silly recommending this book because it feels very “Guys! Guess what? This classic is actually good!” I read David Copperfield when I was younger, but when the yummy Richard Armitage narrated it for Audible, I listened to it and realized that much of the humor had completely gone over my head, my first time through. I listened often while I was driving and I remember thinking I'd better pull over – I was laughing so hard I was about to run my car up a light pole. When I was younger, all the heartbreaking parts of Copperfield’s… show more.