Dickens, Doubled: The Hidden Architecture of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’

One Crime, Two Survivors, and the Three Pairs Holding the Story Together

David Copperfield nearly killed me. For the last several years I’ve given myself a goal of reading a certain number of classics each year. This year my ambition involved what I affectionately call the big-ass classics—the longer works of writers like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Dickens.

I sailed through East of Eden, The Woman in White, Crime and Punishment…