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    A Tale of Two Cities
    A Tale of Two Cities
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Audiobook13 hours

    A Tale of Two Cities

    Written by Charles Dickens

    Narrated by Frank Muller

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Novel by Charles Dickens, published both serially and in book form in 1859. The story is set in the late 18th century against the background of the French Revolution. Although Dickens borrowed from Thomas Carlyle's history, The French Revolution, for his sprawling tale of London and revolutionary Paris, the novel offers more drama than accuracy. The scenes of large-scale mob violence are especially vivid, if superficial in historical understanding. The complex plot involves Sydney Carton's sacrifice of his own life on behalf of his friends Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette. While political events drive the story, Dickens takes a decidedly antipolitical tone, lambasting both aristocratic tyranny and revolutionary excess--the latter memorably caricatured in Madame Defarge, who knits beside the guillotine. The book is perhaps best known for its opening lines, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," and for Carton's last speech, in which he says of his replacing Darnay in a prison cell, "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known." -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 11, 2008
    ISBN9781428199989
    Author

    Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens was born in 1812 and grew up in poverty. This experience influenced ‘Oliver Twist’, the second of his fourteen major novels, which first appeared in 1837. When he died in 1870, he was buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey as an indication of his huge popularity as a novelist, which endures to this day.

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    Reviews for A Tale of Two Cities

    4/5

    6,912 ratings207 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Very good narrator, concise, animated and made it quite interesting experience

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Frank Muller (rest in peace) gives another mesmerizing performance. He’s the best!
    • 5/5
      "A far, far better thing" than I have ever heard/read.
    • 4/5
      Sydney Carton is the best. A fantastic finish. Frank Muller does him right.
    • 3/5
      Charles dickens only wrote one historical novel, and this is it. It is hard to find a year when there is not a new edition of this work. The plot hinges on the very odd occasion of twp men, not linked genetically, who are identical twins. They are contrasted, the favoured one, who is monied and blessed with the love of a beautiful girl, and the other who is a self made lawyer's clerk. they are finally acquainted, and the less well off person, chooses to sacrifice himself so that the well-to-do one may continue his pampered existence. Not a favourite plot of mine. There is a reasonable attempt to cover some of the incidents of the French revolution, but it does not shine in that area. The book was first published in 1859.
    • 5/5
      I'm glad I finished this book. Let's be honest, I almost want to give up on this one, yet I loved this book. The main reason I almost gave up was for the dumb fact I read a Victorian book during the summer. Note to self, don't read Victorian books during the summer. Should have stuck with my easy reads. OH WELL! At least I gave myself a challenge.

      With that said, I do like this book a lot. If this didn't take place during the French Revolution, I'd think I'd be bored with it. Some people like the characters in this novel, to me that the only fault I found. I didn't really care for any of them. Inset what I liked about this book was the time period. It kept the story interesting and it was a character on it's own.

      I wish Dickens wouldn't add so many characters in his book some times. I like the names he uses and usually like the main character, but the other characters he creates aren't very interesting in my mind. and like I said before, this one is an example of that.

      A Christmas Carol is the only other Dickens thing I read before this and liked that better. It was easier to follow and the character I liked better too. I still liked A Tale of Two Cities, but he could of cut out some of his characters in this one.

      I still think this is a book everyone should read. Let's face it if you don't know the first line in this book, then I question your reading material. Can't say this is Dickens best work (cause it's not my favorite out of the two I read), but I love his writing style in this one.
    • 4/5
      I am not sure that anything I can say will add any value to the wealth of critical comment already available for this classic novel. I first read it towards the end of the last millennium (to lend an appropriately archaic feel) as one of the set books for my English Literature O level (the predecessor of what we would today call GCSEs). I was fortunate to enjoy the support of some excellent English teachers throughout my time at school, yet even their attentive ministrations failed to save this book from falling prey to the fate of most works that are encountered as compulsory reading. As a fifteen-year-old I found it very tedious and longwinded, and could not then imagine I might ever read it again for pleasure.To be fair, I think that tedious and longwinded are not always unfair when applied to Dickens, and would cite either Barnaby Rudge (surely there is an initial D missing from that surname) or Our Mutual Friend as evidence for the prosecution. (Indeed, it is quite a feat on Dickens’ part to make tedious a novel that starts so promisingly, with bodies being dragged from the Thames late at night.)They are not, however, fair for A Tale of Two Cities. Going off at another tangent, I have been struggling to think of another book which has such famous first AND last sentences: there are plenty that can offer one or the other, but few that manage both. The story is, of course, well known, so I won’t waste everyone’s time with a synopsis of the plot. There are some excellent characters: Jarvis Lorry, the serious solicitor who has given his professional life in service of Tellson’s Bank is a paragon of probity, always clad in various shades of brown. Not a man overburdened with humour, and perhaps not one with whom one might wish to be closeted on a long journey (although that fate befalls various people throughout the book). Jerry Cruncher is a hardy perennial from the Dickens stable: a Cockney, salt of the earth type, vaguely reminiscent of Silas Wegg, though better served in the leg department, or less chirpy Sam Weller, who is always on hand to do Mr Lorry’s or Tellson’s bidding, but who has a dark secret. C J Stryver, the pompous, overbearing barrister is brilliantly drawn, hyperinflated with his own self-importance and clothed in obtuseness as in armour of triple steel. Paradoxically, the more central figures seem less substantial. Charles Darnay (another man with a secret) is rather two dimensional, and the reader almost wishes that his lookalike, the diffident and dissolute lawyer Sidney Carton, whose nocturnal efforts keep legal Stryver’s practice afloat, but with precious little acknowledgement of that debt) had won Lucie Manette’s love.Like most of Dickens’ n ovels, this was published in weekly or fortnightly instalments, a fact reflected in the peaks and troughs of action throughout, as the writer carefully regulated the flow to leave sufficiently gripping cliff-hangers. Dickens was a master at conflicting tone. The chapter in which Jerry Cruncher’s sun follows his father on a nocturnal expedition, expecting to see him go fishing, is hilarious, although the mirth is in sharp juxtaposition with a chapter of huge sadness.This is a novel that repays reading for pleasure. It is also a more manageable length for modern taste than some of his heftier tomes. I read it in the excellent Penguin Classics edition which offers extensive background notes throughout the story, and an introduction full of insight (possibly aimed more at informing a re-reading, than for someone coming to the story for the first time.
    • 5/5
      Why has it taken me so long to go back and read this incredible book?
    • 4/5
      Having read my way through Dickens in publication order to this point, I'm of two minds about this entry. I probably did this Dickens novel a disservice - and myself - by reading it on the heels of "Citizens" by Siman Schama, a thick non-fiction history about the French Revolution. Dickens' overdramatization of revolutionary elements rubbed me wrong in a few places, and that had some side effects. I was irritated with the more-than-usual obfuscating language in the opening chapters, and their thick layer of sentimentality I hadn't seen so much of since The Old Curiosity Shop, my least favourite. It's a more poetic look at mobs and mob behaviour than he's done before, but weaker for not being as close or insightful a study as we saw in Barnaby Rudge. This version relies on symbols for brevity, the Defarges standing in for practically every historical figure on the revolutionary side.I struggled to find a favourite character among these many reversions of prior Dickens figures, settling for Dr. Manette because of his unusual ailment but only reminding me of how mild the Bastille experience actually was for its inmates. Besides the usual Dickens flaws - the boatload of coincidence, weak female characterizations, domestic abuse presented as humour - what impressed me least was the plot. Dickens had his end in mind and drives straight towards it without any side trips, only throwing in some revolutionary glimpses for decoration. That's hardly the stuff of Bleak House. And then comes the other hand. In its delineated third part, there are improvements in every respect. Dr. Manette acquires a new fascinating aspect to his character, Charles earned my sympathy, and the plot introduces some nasty twists in its path. Most important, the revolutionary period of France is thrown into the bold and detailed relief that was lacking to this point. Finally I obtained a sense of what it would truly be like to live in the midst of that hair-raising Terror tumult with its irrational courts and bloodshed in the streets, and it fits with all the facts I know plus adds a few I didn't. Therese Defarge takes on an especially epic scale of menace with her sewing needles, possibly earning the crown among Dickens villains. And there are braver examples here of men facing death than the one Fagin set so long ago. I'm reminded of David Copperfield, with its strange lull through the middle, except that the problems here extend through the beginning as well. Is a fantastic and stirring third act enough to compensate for all? It raises this novel well above Curiosity Shop, and I think it's stronger than Hard Times, another of Dickens' shorter novels, but it cannot rank among his best.
    • 5/5
      Great story, Great opening line. Great closing line.Not the easiest read with Dickens old fashion style of writing.Set during the French Revolution and the reign of terror. There are time jumps.
    • 4/5
      Lucy & Charles, Dr. Minette, and the menacing de Farge's. Hearing it, rather than reading it, helped me get through this classic with some understanding of the plot and what was going on. I will have to try some other Dickens because I really enjoyed this one!
    • 5/5
      When my high schooler was complaining about having to read this for school I took the opportunity to read along in solidarity and also as an excuse to final read something that I wished I had read many years ago and consider a gap in my classics reading experience.So my kid didn't love it, but I really did. To be fair - in college this sort of thing was what I gravitated towards and I read quite a fair amount of 17th-19th century lit, so it didn't have the same intimidation factor as it had for my kid. In fact, I kept (inwardly) marvelling over how short it was for Dickens. Anyway, for me, it was a treat. The story was most of the time pretty gripping. Granted, there were interludes that were v e r y slow but most of it felt snappy to me. It made me contemplate the French Revolution in a way that I think I failed to when studying it in college. The horror of the reality of it is really hard to contemplate. And its relative recentness is also sobering. Also, France's recovery is pretty amazing to think about.Even though it was certainly very heavy, I am sad that it is over - and I am so glad I finally read it.
    • 4/5
      An actual thriller. Loved it and cried.
    • 5/5
      Historical Fiction set during the Terror of the French Revolution by Charles Dickens; although starting at a slow pace, and sometimes exhibiting a confusing change of time and setting, by the time you reach Book III it really takes off and beats out any modern Hollywood action drama film by far. Aside from having perhaps two of the most well known literary quotations at the beginning and end of the book, it is a classic in how it deals with the nature of human perseverance during the darkness of times, the nature of sacrifice, and fickleness of the mob versus the solidity of individual principle. A book more relevant for our time than I'd like. A must read.
    • 5/5
      Classic book drama. What an wonderful story of treason, romance, and danger.
    • 4/5
      One of my all-time favourites, because of Dicken's political and social insight, and because of how the story ends with a man's ultimate sacrifice for the sake of love.
    • 1/5
      Too longwinded. Gave up.
    • 5/5
      A historical fiction novel from Dickens which follows a group of characters in London and Paris at the start of the French Revolution. The story follows a group of characters including an ex-prisoner of the Bastille who is dealing with the after effects of his imprisonment; a French nobleman who is trying to break free of his high social status and a pair of revolutionaries (one of whom knits constantly). There is an interesting mix of characters and the street riots along with the storming of the Bastille were exceptional. The juxtaposition of the two cities is reflected in the characters, and the heartless and brutal nature of the revolution is reflected in the story.
    • 5/5
      The annual read, after the annual viewing of the film on Thanksgiving Day (Ronald Colman version, only, thank you). It has to be the mark of brilliance that even after a dozen readings, each time you harbor a secret hope that maybe THIS year he won't (spoiler alert...) get his head cut off. No better opening and closing lines in literature.
    • 5/5
      Set during the French Revolution, the story follows a French doctor, wrongfully imprisoned for years, who reunites with his daughter and moves to London. There, they settle into a comfortable life, the daughter happily marries and starts a family, all unknowing that they will be pulled back to Paris and into the horror of the revolution. This is Dickens at his finest, weaving various threads into such an intricate pattern and only hinting here and there at the final dramatic design, in which all the characters play a surprising part in relation to one another. Thrilling in parts and tender in others, this ticks all the right boxes for me. I loved it.
    • 3/5
      "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." begins A Tale of Two Cities and the book itself felt like that to me. Some of it was really good and some of it was quite a struggle to get through.In the first parts of it I only really enjoyed the scenes that took place around Fleet Street and The Strand in London, places it was easy for me to imagine after wandering around there quite a bit on a business trip, and I didn't really get into it again until all the main characters had made their way to Paris.I didn't enjoy the comic aspects of Jerry Cruncher or Miss Pross, feeling they were completely unbelievable and out of place in what was otherwise pretty dramatic. But once in Paris they weren't funny anymore and had pretty serious roles to play.I certainly didn't understand Sydney Carton. I knew he loved and would never have a relationship with Lucie Manette, but he kept going on about his life was a waste and making it sound like he'd done bad things, but there's no hint what anything might've been. All we see of him is his heavy drinking, deep thinking and general rudeness to everyone else. It was only clear at the end what he was willing to do for Lucie's happiness...The heaviest hitting line in the book was Madame Defarge, one of the leaders of the French Revolution after her own personal revenge against the aristocrats, when her husband asks if they might've executed enough people so far and she replies "tell the Wind and Fire where to stop. But don't tell me."Overall, it wasn't my favorite Dickens book. It had some good parts but I had to really work hard to not give up reading it.
    • 4/5
      I thought it was about time I read a classic.
      I loved the opening passage "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness ..."
      At the end it was just as good a page turner as modern novels.
      An eye opener, I was astounded at the brutality of the revolution, the inhumanity of the revolutionaries. I presume quite historically accurate.
      Good portrayal of characters and subtle revelation of relationships.
    • 5/5
      It is probably my twentieth reading of this book. It inspires me every time.

      It is a story of redemption of several, but none more so than of Sydney Carton. Beauty in the midst of madness and terror.
    • 2/5
      A great classic.
    • 3/5
      Men in love with the same woman join the French revolution. It's a love triangle involving a married couple and another man. Madame Dafarge, obsessed with her knitting, presents a sinister character. The far kinder Lucie Manette is devoted to her father. Will those accused of treason keep their heads? Although this is one of Dickens' classic works, it's not a favorite. The memorable opening line is about as good as the novel gets for me. This was a re-read, although it's been several years since I read it.
    • 2/5
      The French Revolution takes an interest in a family of expatriates.2/4 (Indifferent).There are some good characters (and also some terrible ones who exist purely to be noble or evil). About half the book is spent dwelling on Big Important Historical Tragedy in a way that guarantees the book is regarded as a Big Important Historical Work. A Tale of Two Cities is to Charles Dickens what Schindler's List is to Steven Spielberg.
    • 2/5
      over rated
    • 4/5
      It was my first Dickens, it was not my last. It was summer in Chicago and I was surrounded by lovely albeit unruly children. Oh dear, it was a struggle at times, watching three kids while my wife and their mother were in the city. Still I finished the novel over a long afternoon without drugging my charges.

      It is a story of sacrifice, maybe of redemption. I felt for everyone, zealots and drunkards alike. The concluding scaffold scene engendered tears, it has to be admitted. Is there a better novel about the French Revolution, its aspirations and its contradictions?
    • 5/5
      Suuuuuper glad I read this as an adult. I'm sure I appreciated it a lot more than I would have at 15. Not sure if it was reading via audiobook (Dickens' writing is incredibly lyrical), but I really enjoyed this book.
    • 1/5
      Dry and boring all.... the.... way .... through ?