OLIVER TWIST.....This darkly satiric indictment of the social ills of Victorian London tells the story of a young orphan who becomes involved with a gang of criminals. 460 PAGES IN PRINT.

The dark, dank, neighborhoods and corresponding players confirmed that Dickens still holds as relevant today and can still shock. The scenes containing Sikes, Fagin, and Mr. Bumble are especially compelling and a stark representation in contrast to that of Oliver, Rose, or Brownlow. Yes, Dickens does moralize, but with a respectful deftness in style and delivery.

Dickens is a master wordsmith with an extraordinary sense of plot, which is keen on display in Oliver Twist. The novel is also populated with remarkable characters; alas (and the reason for four, rather than five stars) the novel's namesake is not one of them. Poor Oliver remains a naive bourgeois little boy for the entirety of the novel.

Probably the best-known of all Dickens' works. The novel is full of drama, sarcasm and dark humour even as it reveals the hypocrisies of the time. You can see why Dickens writing sparked an outpouring of guilt from the middle classes after they were published, the picture of grinding poverty it gives you is too realistic to be anything other than rooted in cold unpleasant fact.

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