"Has a dead man any use for money? ... What world does money belong to? This world. How can money be a corpse's?"
In my humble opinion, I have just finished reading Charles Dicken's bestest written novel. This was his last completed novel (1865) before he died (obviously). No one can weave a tapestry of story lines and characters as he can without forgetting to tie up a few loose strings.
The main plot, oddly enough, centers around some dust mounds or garbage heaps. What the dust mounds are really made of is a matter left undefined (there are several theories floating around - the most "poopular" one being that they contain human excrement and I can't believe that I am even typing this right now). John Harmon Sr. made his fortune in dust mounds (running the garbage business so to speak) and died leaving several wills. The will that concerns most of the story maintains that his son, John Harmon, will inherit everything (including the dust/garbage mounds) if he marries a certain girl by the name of Bella Wilfer. If he does not marry her, the inheritance goes to a Mr. Boffin, a dustman in Mr. Harmon's employ for many years. Well, the beginning of the book opens with John Harmon junior's drowning...or does it?
There are so many main characters and sub-plots woven into this novel that I am having the most frightful time summing it up. Is Bella Wilfer really a conniving little mercenary witch? Is it true that a man who's been saved from drowning can't be drowned to death? Did Gaffer Hexam murder John Harmon before pulling him out of the river? What happened to Mr. Boffin and why has he become such a bear? Where did Lizzie Hexam disappear to and why? Some other main characters include Fascination Fledgeby, Mr. Riah, Jenny Wren (the unforgettable doll's dress maker), Eugene Wrayburn and Mortimer Lightwood, John Rokesmith, Rogue Riderhood, Sloppy, Betty Higden, Silas Wegg, Mr. Venus, Mr. Podsnap who "stood very high in Mr. Podsnap's opinion," Twemlow, The Veneerings, Bradley Headstone, Mr. and Mrs. Lammle, and so on and so on.
As the title implies, the cast of characters are sort of known to each other or through each other. How Dicken's could keep track of all these relationships is a wonder (he actually made a very good outline before writing most of his novels and so it was well thought out in advance). Some have had the opinion that the novel is hastily tied up at the end but I disagree. To me it felt as if all of the climactic action and sub-plots just stewed and simmered until ready to explode, leaving me to feel the same surprising feelings as did Bella Wilfer, Silas Wegg, Rogue Riderhood and others whose lives are entirely changed by the events of the story.
I think the greatest lesson from this novel has the do with $. At what lengths are people willing to go to get it and when they have it is it enough?
I give this book a rating of five ***** stars. I plan to read this novel again in a few years. I wish that I had done a better job of marking passages I found interesting to refer to. The BBC made a wonderful miniseries of Our Mutual Friend in 1998. Although it does not have every single detail or character from the novel I found that it was as true as possible to the original and I enjoyed the cast and the opportunity to visually see what the dustmounds much talked of in the book might have been like.
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