NICHOLAS NICKLEBY

For those of us who love Dickens, this is exactly what we love best: the hearty hero, the evil scoundrel, the benevolent benefactors, humor, social commentary, and, best of all, the vast array of eccentrics. Our hero, Nicholas, fights a cruel uncle, a demeaning and humiliating “teaching” job at a boy’s boarding school in Yorkshire and wins (by his own hard work and kind heart) a happy life for himself and nearly everybody he takes a fancy to. You read Dickens for the story, but you also read him for the genius he shows in creating characters. In a page he can make a person more real and more memorable than most authors can manage in an entire book. Robert Whitfield, given this Herculean task, never falters. He juggles armies of accents, ages, and levels of intelligence with never a slip. He covers he gamut from effete snob to exhausted street urchin, and not only manages to keep them all straight, but infuses into every one a distinct personality. This is a feast! D.G. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: AUG/ SEP 01]