Memory And The Past

Margaret Atwood begins Book Three of Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities with Dickens the performer: a man who gave full theatrical readings of his own work, annotated his scripts with the 19th-century repertoire of gestures, always wanted to be an actor, and practiced sleight of hand as an amateur magician. She hears the stage in the prose, in the dawn scene where the birds are twittering and everyone is stirring except the Marquis.

Then the accounting. Atwood lists the balls Dickens has in the air: Darnay in danger against all common sense, a cast that somehow has to get to Paris, and Dr. Manette due to turn from fragile old man to hero of the occasion and back again. She names Sydney Carton the real hero of the novel and calls the escape from Paris a car chase in the making. The question she leaves open is how far Dickens will take the revolutionary women. No spoilers, she says. Hang by your thumbs.