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Title: Soot-covered Sentimentality
Review: Any Dickens book can be summarized in two words: coal and suffering. I was forced to read this weepy piece of high-strung emotional swill in high school. Dickens lacks the punch and anger of Zola's sweeping "Germinal". For the best critique of Dickens, read "Against Nature" by Joris-Karl Huysmans. The high schools of America would be better off trashing their Dickens paperbacks and reading something with real value, like Lewis Carroll or the Marquis De Sade, both masterful storytellers of the absurdity of authority. Plus both Carroll and Sade are a lot funnier than the ever-serious monotony of Dickens. Do yourself a favor, steer clear of all those Dickens books in the bookstore and curl up with a nice volume of Sade.
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