What the Dickens?

Let me get this out of the way before we fall in love any deeper: I love Dickens. I REALLY love Dickens. Charles Dickens, born 1812, died 1870.
I have said this to people, and 98% invariably have a response akin to this: "Oooooo hoooooooo wayyyyyyyyy heeeyyyyyyyy la-di-da you like Dickens heyyyyyy well aren't you little Miss clever clogs/hoity toity/foofle laloofle:. I made the last one up. But the implication seems to be that anyone who has read, or even attempted to read Dickens is a bit up themselves.
I don't want to downplay Dickens, because clearly I think he's neato, but to me, Dickens must have been the....maybe...Erica Jong? of his day. I'm trying to think of popular, yet respectable writers of our age, but can't think of one off the top of my head. I'd say Dan Brown but I'd be lying.
Seriously. Dickens is a pretty easy read. But here's the rub: he is a fabulous read. His characters are so lively that they just about jump off the page and slap you in the face.
David Copperfield was a book that changed my life. Yes, it's about a gazillion pages long (and THIN pages, with little writing), and yes it usually comes bound in that hardback red cover with gold writing that looks impressive on the bookshelf, but hundreds of pages of that book fly by in an afternoon, or so it felt. I read this book on my honeymoon, and very rarely do I feel so gutted that I have finished a book. Sometimes I finish them and want to hurl the book out the car window. When I finished DC I was sitting on the balcony of the place that we stayed in in Broome. It was a warm day, despite being the middle of winter and as I finished it I curled it up to my chest and hugged it for about ten minutes. Truly. I wanted to bask in it's glow. I wanted to sew it into a blanket and wrap myself up in it. I wanted to blend it into liquid and drink it. I wanted to lever open my ribcage and plant it next to my heart. That's where I felt it belonged. Just thinking about it now makes me want to snap this laptop shut and read it from cover to cover again. Right now.
Now. This is not to say that DC is my favourite book. It's not. That will come later. It's one of. But it is the most heartwarming, the most uplifting, the most real book I have ever read. Some people think that Dickens is a bit of a depressing writer, or a bit of a one trick pony, and that his books paint a picture of a gloomy and dismal London, full of crooks and schemers, a Thames overflowing with rotting detritus, the streets crawling with thieves, orphans, whores, and the pitiful remnants of decent society. Let me tell you, I have never read an author's work that made me want to go to London more, because any city that produces writers like that is a-ok in my book. Or my blog. (I am a bit of an Anglophile anyway, but that's another story).
If you haven't read DC, it's very difficult to entice you to read it based on my interpretation alone, but if you have read it-boy. How about that Uriah Heep? That ingratiating little piece of snot. I knew he was trouble from day one.Uriah always seemed the most realistic character to me, I could almost feel him breathing down the back of my neck. Steerforth, you cad. I've met your type a thousand times before, and I'm sorry, Little Em'ly was an idiot for falling for your sweet talk. Agnes? Let's be friends! I think you're great. Ham? Oh, Ham, I've known your type too and it was never going to turn out for the best, but I was rooting for you. Dora, you're a bit of a dope, but harmless too. I wished you well.
And David. Sweet, honest, flawed David. Lovely David, gullible David, too-quick-to-grow-up David. I think I missed you most of all. You let me live in your world for a week or two and I will never forget it. You made me feel younger, more optimistic and less cynical all at the same time. I have searched high and low and have never found a fictional man like you.
Brilliant.
I made a terrible mistake after reading DC. I should have left it for a while and then read something completely different, like a book on container gardening or some such. But I was in such a dreamy honeymoon state that I started Great Expectations. On the same day. I know, I know, I know what you're thinking. Unless it's a sequel, what was I thinking?? How could I expect to find characters I cared about half as much as those in DC? Unfortunately I didn't, but it is certainly not the fault of Great Expectations. Sadly, GE will always just be the book that followed DC for me now, and it is a true regret. I would not be able to read it again without wishing I was reading DC.
The one thing that saved GE for me and kept me going was Miss Havisham. I loved that crazy broad. I know she's kind of supposed to be the creepy bad guy, but how interesting is she as a character? For the uninitiated, she's this old lady who lives in a huge crumbling mansion and was jilted at the alter when she was younger. She only ever wears her wedding dress, and the wedding feast decays on her table. She leaves her clocks stopped at the exact moment she found out she was jilted. Dickens describes her as a skeleton with eyes. She fosters a beautiful girl, Estella, who she trains to enchant boys (Pip) into falling in love with her and then revels in their pain as she jilts the boys as she was once jilted.
Miss Havisham is another one of those "breathe down your neck" characters. Dickens recreates her so delicately, you can imagine her sliding a dry, brittle old hand down your face as you read. Pip was a bit of pill, if I'm being honest, but Miss Havisham was the bomb.
The weird thing is though, even though this book was a disappointment to me, I still loved it. It was only a disappointment in relation to David Copperfield, and who knows, I might read it again some day.
But because I felt so burned, I haven;t been able to pick up another Dickens since, though I am dying to. I will though, because I know I will love it. Nicholas Nickleby might be my next one- maybe The Pickwick Papers. I've heard Nicholas Nickleby is one of his most beloved books, but is criticised for a lack of character development. Eek! Not Dickens! That could break my heart.
So for now, it's still Mr Copperfield, my other honeymoon love. I only wish I'd met him sooner.

By the way, there is an episode of South Park that parodies Great Expectations. I saw the South Park episode first, and it kept coming back to me as I was reading the book. Usually it's the other way around. But in my opinion, it's one of the worst episodes, and that is a very big call for me, as I love South Park. But Miss Havisham controls a fleet of flying monkey robots, and that aint half bad.