Hard Cash- a brief thought

I had this thought while reading about Dickens for my paper:

Hard Cash never seemed believable to me, and it’s been hard for me to say why. Yes, the things that happen are pretty outrageous, but if I read in a newspaper that a man was mentally insane, then thought to have died on a ship, but then was actually only in a coma and was alive and his insanity was cured, I would think, wow, that’s a crazy story, but I would believe it. In the book, I didn’t believe it, and here’s why: in the book, no one thought it all that extraordinary. Yes, Julia jumped up and couldn’t believe it for about two sentences, and the captain of the boat was shocked for a sentence or so, but that’s not really a realistic amount of shock. If the characters kept talking about how extraordinary these events were for the rest of the novel, then I might believe them to be true.

How do other people feel about this?