Our Mutual Friend #219763

John Harmon was the son and heir of a wealthy dust contractor. Inheriting his father’s wealth was contingent only upon behaving himself and arriving at the opportune time to marry the young and lovely, Bella Wilfer. Away from England he receives terrible news, his father is dead. John made to rush home but on his route home he disappears, and many consider him to be a drowned body found nearby, dead and gone as well. The fortune passes to an elderly and loyal ex retainer of the family and he sets up to live quietly, but all was not destined to last. <br><br>Charles Dickens' wrote ‘Our Mutual Friend’ last of all his novels after thirteen previous novels in his prolific career. Unappreciated at the time, it has come to be regarded as one of the best of Dickens’ life. His similes hum with life and his characters are peculiar in a way that makes them somehow more real. Unlike hearing from a narrator, we wait with the characters to hear the next development on the grapevine. The energy and desire to express something meaningful about our shared human experience came through in every installment as it came out. With a new illustrator and a new way of publishing, more accessible to the masses, the story focuses on the problems that come with the greed and moral decadence that wealth can bring. A controversial message in a society which viewed wealth as just and the unfortunates of the world as a natural reality.