Welcome friends and neighbors and thank you for joining me on my inaugural journey of Charles Dickens’ 1859 classic novel. To start, here is a comprehensive list of all the things I know about A Tale of Two Cities:

1) It starts with the line “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”

2) I think it ends with someone being hanged and saying “My only regret is that I have but one life to give for my country.” I could be confusing this with some other book though.

3) It presumably involves stories that take place in more than one city.

Armed with that knowledge, and that knowledge alone, I begin the book. I decided to avoid the Googles. I did read the first few paragraphs to establish that it takes place during the French Revolution, but stopped as soon as it got into spoiler territory. So, without further adieu, I begin the definitive, objective summarization:

This book is broken into three parts, or books, as I hear most novels were at the time since they could only bind books at a certain thickness. And also probably to boost sales. In this one they are titled BOOK THE FIRST, BOOK THE SECOND, and….wait for it…..BOOK THE THIRD. Really broke the mold with the title of the last part, didn’t he? In this article we will cover the entirety of BOOK THE FIRST. Don’t worry, it is not a full third of the book, it is more like 40 pages out of 300. BOOK THE SECOND and BOOK THE THIRD will take multiple entries each.

BOOK THE FIRST

RECALLED TO LIFE

Chapter 1
The Period

It was the best of Shires, it was the Worcestershires. It was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness. It was the time of next-day delivery, it was the time of pop-up ads. It was the age of cat videos, it was age of conspiracy theories. It was the delight of pineapple on pizza, it was the horror of pineapple on pizza, depending on your attitude towards cooked fruit.
(Side note, cooked fruit is terrible and every decent person knows it.)

The author then mentions a few historical oddities I had to look up including Mrs. Southcott (a self -proclaimed prophetess of the apocalypse) and the Cock-Lane ghost (a haunting hoax completely unrelated to roosters or alpha males.)

France is apparently very muddy and fond of extreme punishments for minor crimes. Meanwhile highway robbery has become a national pastime in England. People are warned to put their furniture in storage before leaving town so it doesn’t get stolen, and then robbed and killed to death on the road. Sounds like a sweet deal for Big Storage.

All in all sounds like everyone is having the Worcestershires. I guess we’ll wait and see when the best of Shires comes in. I bet it’s gonna be in the form of pineapple on pizza: not the worst thing that could happen, but more like the silver lining of getting only half your house robbed.

Chapter 2
The Mail

The year is 1775. The first of our protagonists is heading up a hill with the cheerful name “Shooter’s Hill.” In the mud. And the fog. At night. Presumably it will be uphill both ways. Along with our hero is a coach designed for the transportation of both mail and passengers, called “The Mail” as well as three fellow passengers, and two drivers. The horses are tired AF and not totally not having it but the drivers persuade them to keep going with whips. The “passengers” are not riding, but in fact they are walking next to the tired AF horse. Everyone is afraid everyone else might secretly be a robber. So far this book is off to a cheery start, let me tell you.

They get to the top of Shooter’s Hill and are all about to climb back in the coach when a guy gallops up from the other side. Everyone is much distrust of everyone else because the scene that has been set is unlikely to be a happy one. Galloping man, whose name is Jerry, asks for one of the passengers, Jarvis Lorry. The coachman proceeds to spend two full paragraphs how he will 100% shoot Jerry if he does anything sus, so Jerry approaches very slowly after said warning.

Jerry, it turns out, is a messenger from a bank and hands Jarvis a note, which reads “Wait at Dover for mam’seille.” To which he tells Jerry to respond with “RECALLED TO LIFE.” This is not at all a cryptic and worrisome message to the already edgy passengers and coachman. After the message is delivered the Mail everyone goes on it’s soggy, muddy way, super stoked to not be murderified.

Chapter 3
The Night Shadows

The author muses about how everyone is a secret mystery to everyone else. Every town is full of secrets. Each house holds secrets, and each room holds more secrets, and each person in each room is a secret. Its like an In-secret-tion. Everyone’s internal monologue is totally unknowable to everyone else, and also everyone will eventually die and take their secrets with them, so really they are forever secrets. This book is thus far an inspiration that fills me with warm fuzzies.

Our buddy Jerry slowly travels back to the bank and stops at taverns. He is described as having close set, dark, evil looking eyes, male pattern baldness, and hair so spiky that no one would dare play leap frog with him lest they get impaled. Why grown men would be playing leapfrog is beyond me, but maybe that was a thing back in the day? In reviewing this blog, Colleen asked if this was an actual comparison, since I have a penchant for hyperbole, so yes, it is real. The actual quotation reads:

Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith’s work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall  than a head of hair, that the best players at leap frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.

Meanwhile our hero Jarvis is dozing in the coach and dreaming about digging someone up. Must be one of those annoying dreams where you half wake up then fall right back into it, cuz it is always a 46-year-old man who declares he has been buried alive for the past 18 years but is recalled to life. Jarvis asks if he wants to be shown to “her” and gets various answers.

That’s not creepy. Sounds like the Worcestershires are still going strong.

Chapter 4
The Preparation

They roll up to the hotel in Dover all muddy and bedraggled and the “head drawer” meets them. This is an old timey term for a bartender and in this context appears to be some combination of bartender/waiter/assistant manager according to the interwebs.

Since everyone who travels via the Mail arrives all grungy, muddy, and nasty, what with the uphill both ways nonsense, they have a special suite designed to help them get un-gross. Called the Concord Suite, we learn that “though but one type of man was seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it.”

Thus a Dapper man in his 60’s emerges in a fancy flaxen wig and nice clothing that is neat, but worn and out of fashion. He has a painful conversation with the drawer. I say painful because the drawer begins and ends every sentence. “sir” Every. Single. Sentence. “Sir, your breakfast sir. Tis a wonderful morning sir. Sir, have you come from London sir?” So British I half expect him to spend his free time stealing artifacts for the British Museum.

It is at this point dear sir (or madame) that we learn our hero, Jarvis Lorry, works for Tellson’s Bank sir. And you see sir, Tellson’s Bank has extensive business dealings in both London and Paris sir. It has done well sir, for nigh on 150 years sir. If I may be so bold sir, I would venture that these are the titular Two Cities of which this Tale unfolds sir.

See how painful that paragraph was? Just be glad I am reading this and not you. Sir.

Jarvis strolls around the beach until mam’seille arrives that evening. As soon as she arrives he is summoned to her apartment, which is decorated about as cheerily as Dracula’s Romanian castle, we find out mam’seille is a blond 17 year old girl named Miss Manette. She is miraculously not grungy for some reason despite taking the same route as Mr. Lorry. He has a vague recollection of holding a small child matching her description years ago but brushes it off. Foreshadowing much?

Turns out she got a letter from the bank informing her that a document regarding her late father’s will had been discovered and needs attending to in Paris. Being an orphan, she asked for a bank representative to accompany her to France so she doesn’t get murderified on the way. What better protection than a total stranger, right? Now that they are acquainted:

Miss Manette: Are you sure we have never met?

Mr. Lorry: Considering that I definitely did not totally foreshadow that we have met, I can confidently say we are strangers. Now take a seat while I tell you a story. I will first spend an entire page explaining how I am a proper English businessman and as such have no emotions whatsoever. In the course of this narrative I will reiterate how important it is to not have emotion and only attend to business in literally ever single paragraph. If you find yourself having emotions, do some math problems or something so I can continue being an emotionless talking machine.

Now, on to my story. I was working in our French office 20 years ago as a trustee of your father’s estate. He disappeared to probably prison or something, your mom died of a broken heart, and I took you to England to be raised as a ward of the bank. Tut tut, what’s that I see? Surprise!?! Quick, tell me what 9 times 90 is so you calm down. Okay, good, now, back to my story.

Surprise! We found your father, so now we are going to Paris so I can positively ID him and so you can go have emotions or whatever it is you French people do. He’s probably a shell of the man he was and seems quite befuddled from the undoubtable trauma but hey, that’s what you’re here for.

She faints, he is very confused as to why, maids come in the help. I should here again mention that yes, he encourages her to do math to calm down:

Let us be clear-headed. If you could kindly mention now, for instance, what nine times nine-pence are, or how many shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should be so much more at ease about your state of mind.

Chapter 5
The Wine Shop

In the Paris suburb of Saint Antoine, a cask of wine falls off a cart and breaks. Everyone in the street rushes to the puddles of wine to drink it, which is kind of gross, but the author goes on to describe how everyone is starving to death and is generally having the Worcestershires. No best of Shires yet I guess. So yeah, gross, but if you’re starving, free wine is free calories, so hey, they get a pass from me. On the bright side, what they lack in food, they make up for in shiny, sharp weapons and tools. I am sure they won’t wind up being used by the end of the book.

During this whole escapade, Monsuier Jacques Defarge, the wine shop owner watches a “joker” named Gaspard write “blood” on the wall in wine-mud. It is apparently some sort of joke of which Gaspard is very proud. Defarge, who is described as being born without a sense of humor, smears mud over it, then goes back inside. He encounters three customers who all happen to also be named Jacques and they all start greeting each other by their first name. Basically a full two paragraphs of “Hello Jacques.” “Nice to see you Jacques.” This greatly offends Madame Defarge for some reason and she gives a Miss Umbridge style *cough cough* every time. No one gets the hint. Not even me.

The Jacques³ all leave and our friends Mr. Lorry and Miss Manette mosey on over from the corner they were lurking in to talk to Monsieur Defarge. From context this appears to be the the guy who has been taking care of Miss Manette’s dad ever since he was discovered, and he leads them up the absolute nastiest stairwell of all time to his room. This stairwell has heaps of rotting garbage on every landing with smells so thick you can taste them. Mmmmmmm…..

They reach the top of the gross staircase at long last and pause to admire the view of the equally gross city out the grimy window. It is an offal view. Get it? Get it? Offal. lolz. After this refreshing view they start up a second, even grosser staircase that they still need to climb. This one comes with 50% more shoddy workmanship, so it is sketchy AF as well as being disgusting. They arrive at the door to the garret (attic with loading door/window to hoist goods through) which Defarge declares is locked for Manette’s own good. Miss Manette is scared for reasons inconceivable to Mr. Lorry, since a gross stairwell leading to a locked attic is totally normal,  so he reminds her that he has no time for emotion.

Defarge makes as much noise as humanly possible, rattling keys, banging on the door, etc. He opens a dimly lit room with so much dramatic slowness I am fairly certain a werewolf or creepy doll is locked inside. After a full page of needless suspense we find the rooms contains….an old man making shoes? Didn’t see that one coming.

Chapter 6
The Shoemaker

Shell of a man confirmed. Old Man Manette hasn’t used his voice in 17 years so it barely works and he seems barely aware of his surroundings. He is busy making shoes and has a hard time following the conversation. When asked his name he replies “105 North Tower.”

He is acting like an Alzheimer’s patient and DeFarge’s and Lorry’s entreaties are all for naught. His daughter stands by him and slowly he starts to realize who she is. He takes out a dirty folded rag that contains two strands of her hair and it begins to dawn on him who it is. Honestly this whole scene is so sad I feel like it would be in poor taste to make fun of it, so I’ll skip to the end. They make arrangements to leave for England that very night. They take a carriage out of town and based on how the book is going so far their itinerary involves the first class tickets aboard the Depress Express with nonstop service to Sad-skatchewan.