Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens Search Amazon for other books by or about Charles Dickens. Rating: Reviewed by: Richard Hawkins

Our Mutual Friend was the last complete novel Dickens wrote and, until the BBC television adaptation was made in 1998, it has also been one of the more obscure. It's along book (although most of Dickens's books are very long), and there are a number of plot diversions that don't really go anywhere. The most glaring example is the sub-plot of the machinations of the unfortunately shackled together ne'er -do-wells Sophronia and Alfred Lammle. They are spectacularly unsuccessful in carrying out anything remotely sinister beyond oily ingratiation. Dickens wrote his novels in installments for his own magazine and probably had plans for this couple to be more effective in their collusions. Perhaps he either changed his mind or was talked out of it - just as he was persuaded (by Bulwer Lytton, author of The Last Days of Pompeii) to get Pip and Estella together at the end of Great Expectations). The other thread that fails in Our Mutual Friendis the incessant satirizing of social climbers - the Veneerings, Podsnapery, and Lady Tippins are worthy of Dickens's scorn, but they take up too much space - it's satire too drawn out and not particularly consequential to the workings of the plot.

However the meaty bits of plot in Our Mutual Friend provide a delicious stew of adventure, intrigue, romance, violence and murder set amid the dust mounds and the fetid waterways of mid-nineteenth century London. Once again, Dickens proves his unmatched ability to describe dirt! Once you've entered Mr. Venus's taxidermy shop, or spent time with Rogue Riderhood on the Thames, it takes a while to get the smell of dust, embalming fluid, rotting corpses, mud and death out of your consciousness.

The scenario revolves around a hero forced to change his identity because of the terrible danger he finds himself in after inheriting a great pile of money (courtesy of piles of dust!). He is tested in his resolve by the capricious Bella Wilfer, as sexy a coquette as Dickens ever dared put into his oeuvre. (Which means she's really not very sexy at all but we're talking about Dickens here - the man had nine children but seemed to prefer to avoid the "unpleasantness" of sex in his work.) At the same time Mr.Venus and the ghastly Silas Wegg conspire to transfer the lucrative dust from Mr Boffin, the hero's other benefactor, to themselves. Meanwhile a whole other universe of plot is making its way through the novel - this involves Lizzie Hexham (one of Dickens's sickeningly goody-goody heroines) and the men who love her. The scenes where Bradley Headstone declaims his wrath at his languid rival, Eugene Wrayburn, are thrilling in their intensity. Headstone is one of Dickens's great villains because he's totally consumed by his infatuation for Lizzie - we can feel the white-hot intensity of his desire to bed her and he is incapable of reining-back his terrible obsession. And Eugene is a worthy addition to Dickens's cast of characters - he becomes infatuated with and eventually grows to love Lizzie in spite of his almost terminal ennui.

Our Mutual Friend would have been a cracking thriller (with a bit of romance chucked in) if Dickens wasn't so profligate with his writing. Nevertheless it is worth persevering with. As always the descriptions and the characters place this in the realms of great literature, as most of Dickens's works are. However much his style becomes unfashionable, there are always redeeming features. His sharp observations and characterizations temper his galloping over-sentimentality. His tendency to waffle on in certain areas especially while trying to make a point about the society of the time is redeemed by his unmatched powers of description, particularly his ability to describe dirt in all its permutations.