Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens

I am a pretty avid lover of the the few Dickens books I have read, but I have to be honest in saying that I wasn't the biggest fan of this one. The plot centred around the title character who spends much of his time gallivanting around the country saving children from cruel orphanages, acting in theatre extravaganzas, pitting himself against his self-possessed uncle and saving his sister from an unwanted marriage. I found Nicholas' character unconvincing from the beginning and the storyline was a bit too good versus evil for my taste. The female characters had no real strong role to play it seemed, but just served as damsels in distress, so that Nicholas could eventually swoop to their rescue.

There were some interesting characters who surpassed the clear divide described above though. Newman Noggs sides himself with Nicholas and his family, but works as a clerk for Nicholas' evil uncle Ralph. We learn that despite Noggs' good intention, his judgment is often clouded by his addiction to alcohol which fuels his erratic behaviour. John Browdie who starts off disliking Nicholas also has a role to play. He is unaccustomed to the learned nobleness of Nicholas and his contemporaries and in him the reader is able to find some comic relief and a believable character. The book's weaknesses though come through more strongly in the weak female characters, the hometown hero and the evil characters where evil seems to be only for the sake of more evil.

Of the works by Dickens that I have read, I would far more recommend Bleak House or Oliver Twist, both of which have a more realistic depiction of the social commentary that made Dickens' work so famous.