Our Mutual Friend

The novels of Charles Dickens are justly famous for their dramatic plots, memorable characters, and sharp insights into how individuals and social classes interact. The novelist writes with sympathy for the poor, biting satire for the rich, and—always—an eye for the perfect detail. In his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend (1865), Dickens tells the story of dark obsessions, from the desire of a beautiful woman to greed for money and grasping for social status. It starts with a dead body in the Thames and a large inheritance whose heir is missing. By the novel’s end, it has drawn in characters from working-class boatmen to London’s nouveaux riches, from an articulator of bones to a young barrister who is idle, cynical, and lost. Along the way, a willful young woman learns to love, and a respectable schoolmaster learns to hate. It’s a large and complex novel that requires no special knowledge and repays our attention with rich emotional rewards.