Little Dorrit
Ratings11
Average rating4.3
Upon its publication in 1857, Little Dorrit immediately outsold any of Dickens's previous books. The story of William Dorrit, imprisoned for debt in Marshalsea Prison, and his daughter and helpmate, Amy, or Little Dorrit, the novel charts the progress of the Dorrit family from poverty to riches. In his Introduction, David Gates argues that "intensity of imagination is the gift from which Dickens's other great attributes derive: his eye and ear, his near-universal empathy, his ability to entertain both a sense of the ridiculous and a sense of ultimate significance.
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Whenever I start a Charles Dickens book, I get bogged down in the first few chapters. But I always slog my way through, because I end up immersed in the book and thoroughly enjoying it. This was again the case with Little Dorrit. Many characters were introduced early in the book, and I did not understand what role they would play. Each one ended up being critical to the overarching plot of the story. Little Dorrit and Arthur Clennam are lovely central characters, good-hearted and mostly hopeful among the clueless, callous, and downright cruel others who surround their lives.
