oliver twist by charles dickens
✨✨✨✨☆
the short version:
orphan boy suffers. a lot. like, so much suffering. but he also meets a gang of criminals, learns some harsh life lessons, and somehow remains pure-hearted through it all. classic Dickens—equal parts depressing and weirdly entertaining.
the vibes:
🪙 victorian poverty, but make it dramatic
🧥 thieves with a surprising amount of charisma
🍞 please sir, can i have some more?
😩 people being way too mean to a literal child
the plot:
oliver, a sweet, starving orphan, dares to ask for more gruel and gets thrown into a series of increasingly terrible situations. he runs away to london, where he meets the very sketchy artful dodger and gets roped into a crime ring run by fagin. meanwhile, an actually decent rich guy (bless you, mr. brownlow) tries to help oliver, but fate says “nah.” cue: kidnappings, dramatic revelations, and a villainous man named bill sykes who is literally terrifying.
my thoughts:
listen. this book is bleak. victorian london is an absolute nightmare, and oliver? this poor kid cannot catch a break. like, charles dickens took “suffering builds character” and ran with it. and yet—i couldn’t stop reading??
the cast is honestly unhinged. the artful dodger? iconic. fagin? creepy but weirdly charismatic. nancy? the most interesting character in the whole book and the only person with an ounce of morality in the entire criminal underworld. (her arc? still not over it.) oliver himself? sweet but kind of just there while the chaos unfolds around him.
also, fun fact: this book taught me that victorians loved long sentences. like, dickens really said, “why use 10 words when you can use 100?” respect.
final verdict:
✨✨✨✨☆
read this if you:
love classic literature with extra drama
enjoy found family but, like, the toxic kind
want to experience the victorian era from the safety of your couch
skip this if you:
need your main characters to do things instead of just endure them
prefer books where people communicate instead of dramatically suffering in silence
hate old-timey sentences that go on for three paragraphs
