Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

I have a deeply ambivalent attitude towards Dickens. On the one hand, I acknowledge that he is an incredible writer of satire, the Gothic, and of plots. On the other hand, I cannot stand his characters. One edition of his repentant whores, golden haired-porcelain dolls, angelic children, jovial good-hearted old men, sentimental older women, cruel and heartless authority figures and nefarious thieves would be quite enough, but Dickens insists on repeating the same characters across every single book, without variation, under an endless number of absurd names. For being the title character, Oliver has a surprisingly insignificant amount of lines, but every single thing he said was so pathetic, so nauseatingly saccharine, that I was almost sick every time he said anything. It felt like eating butter with sugar (if that makes any sense). This is a book that has entered the popular imagination to such an extent that the text itself has almost completely vanished behind the musical, films and various cultural associations surrounding it, and I was shocked at how incredibly racist and classist it was. On the other hand, it was very exciting (clearly paving the way for sensation novels a few decades later) and the Gothic parts were absolutely chilling. Dickens's satire, though mostly unvarying in its manner and targets from novel to novel, is really satisfying and still entertaining. I think what mystifies me most about Dickens is how he manages to capture certain facets of character with such biting precision and accuracy, but cannot write a single whole character that is actually believable or sympathetic (maybe with the exception of Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities).