Roughly 12 years ago, I decided to read Dicken's novels in the order he wrote them. I started with Sketches by Boz and continued forward. It's been a long project. Chuzzlewitt came up when I made my Classics Club list.
Before reading this one, I looked up the serialization schedule. I tried to read it by that, meaning I'd read the first couple chapters and then take a short break - either reading a lighter book or taking a day off of reading in general. In doing this, the structure of the book suddenly opened up and made a lot more sense.
I liked this one. The amount of sass in the narration was really fun whenever Dickens was writing about one of the villains. His critique on the US was also quite apropos and honestly probably still applies to today. Funnily enough, apparently, his US readers hated this book and essentially "canceled" Dickens after reading this because it wasn't to their taste.
The characters were entertaining enough though there's definitely a point where you just want to punch a few of them in the face because their comeuppance doesn't seem to be coming quickly enough. Of course, in the end, it all comes together like any good Dickens novel does. I definitely enjoyed this one.
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