By Rachel McMillan, guest blogger
Our Mutual Friend is nothing less than a universe unto itself. It twists and turns through mistaken identities, through the social whirl of London’s highest society to the royal Boffins of the dust heap, and through the mire of the Thames where Gaffer Hexam and his ilk sweep corpses for pillage from the river’s murky depths.
Our Mutual Friend is set in a London of smoke and fog: where the malevolent Bradley Headstone mazes through the streets to trail his arch rival, where the body of John Harmon remains a constant mystery, where Jenny Dolls barks at her father and where Bella Wilfer reconciles the toil of her previous life with her newfound riches.
Rarely has there been such a melodramatically winding path of wrongful identities, cross-purposes, unintentional evil and the redemption of love. Only Dickens, the complex author of Bleak House and Little Dorrit, could help us excavate the mysteries and riddles deeply embedded in London’s belle époque. And so much of this, fortunately for us readers, is handled by the good-natured pair of Eugene Wrayburn and Mortimer Lightwood. They are the middlemen and our guides through a confusing tunnel of mysteries and darkness. They offer good-natured banter, a healthy dose of slacker attitude, and a friendship so true and inspiring it makes us wish they’d invite us to dinner at a coffee house with them.
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