I have read A Tale of Two Cities numerous times and have made notations up and down the margins north, south, east and west. The reading of it always mesmerizes me with the detail and development of character, setting and connection, of what has gone and what is to come.
Oh, poor Carton, who loves Lucie but not himself enough to push aside his determined fate.
Or Monsieur the Marquis as he travels home from Paris, just late from his most recent evil:
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| The Monsieur the Marquis in red |
The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling (sic) carriage when it gained the hill-top, (sic) that its occupant was steeped in crimson. “It will die out,” said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, “directly.”
Blood not just on his hands but all over him, “steeped in crimson” and “will die out.” And so his bloodline nearly does; he certainly does and almost “directly.”
I love to get lost in Dicken’s flow of words, so deeply knitted together as though the whole cloth of the story was life as he moves characters in and out of the spotlight until the reader is entirely uncertain who should be followed, main character and supporting shifting places constantly, just as life works, each of us moving in and out of the limelight with the people we most care about.
