Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Book Review- Little Dorrit

Little Dorrit just about my favorite of Dickens novels and I am shocked it is not more popular and as talked about as others of his works. To bring you up to speed with a little of what goes in the book here is the synopsis off of Goodreads. 
When Arthur Clenham returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit (Little Dorritt), his mother's seamstress, & in the affairs of Amy's father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr Pancks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, & the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, & the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state & psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens's maturity.

All of the characters have a great amount of depth in the story. I fell in love with Arthur and Little Dorritt and ground my teeth at Mr. Dorritt, his children and Mrs. Clenham. The story touched me and humored me at the same time. All in all it had everything that I want in a book. While it was long, as Dickens books often are, I was kept engaged throughout. Amy reminded me a lot of Fanny Price from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. I have always loved Fanny for her sweetness, patience and kindness and I love Amy for the same reasons. Arthur stuck with me as someone who always was trying to do the right thing by people and continued to love and visit his mother even though she rejected him countless times. The circumlocution office made me laugh several times and sometimes it humorously but sadly reminded me of my job at the pig farm. :)

I watched the 2008 BBC miniseries soon after reading the novel and I enjoyed it a lot as well. It differed but a little from the book and only once where it annoyed me. All in all it is a great adaptation and I would highly recommend it. It effectively brought to life the characters much as I imagined them and also showed me aspects of their personalities that I had missed in reading the novel. 

Little Dorrit was one of the easiest of Dickens' novels to read actually so if you're looking for one to start out with I'd highly recommend it. 


Follow my blog with Bloglovin

2 comments:

  1. That's true about Little Dorrit being one of the easiest novels to read from Dickens. Glad to read that you enjoyed this book! (Which part was it that differed in the BBC adaptation that annoyed you? It's been a while since I've watched it so I vaguely recall which scenes were changed/excluded; otherwise, it was a pretty good adaptation IMO) :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The part that annoyed me the most was that Arthur proposed to Pet. It just didn't follow along with the spirit of the book I thought. The other little changes didn't really bother me as much.

      Delete

I allow anyone to comment but be aware that I reserve the right to delete your comment if I find it inappropriate. Please do not make me have to exercise that right. :)

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...