Very pleasantly surprised with this book. Picked it up to find out if the fuss about Dickens as one of English’s major classics was well deserved (literary barbarian as I am, I had yet to read a single one of his works). Though it was written 150 years ago, both the language and themes feel overwhelmingly modern. The story begins out rather slowly, but once it gains some momentum, the story becomes something of a page-turner.