Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

Reviewed by Sarah
avaliable here and here
Start Date: Somewhere round about June 10th or 11th I think
Finish Date: June 23, 2009
Star Rating: eight stars ********
"Movie" Rating: PG

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family–vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office.

This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving—HOW NOT TO DO IT.



So after having watched the entire mini-series online in basically one sitting, I had to read (well, listen to) the book in order to compare.

The movie mini-series was, I am happy to report, pretty true to the book. There were several changes and of course much was left out, and it isn't quite as true to the book as the A&E Pride and Prejudice, but it comes rather close. The beginning of the book, it seemed to be, was followed more truly, and it drifted a bit more in the end. And of course, there are some things that movies simply Cannot Do. Unfortunately film can't quite do justice to how Clever and straight-up funny Charles Dickens was (is? I keep thinking of my English classes, where we were supposed to speak about all Literature as being current). The Barnacle-inhabited circumlocution office, for example, simply cannont be renderd as ridiculous and laughable through film as it is through Dickens satirical description of it, though I will say that they did rather well with the medium they had to work with.

I listend to this as a Librivox recording at work. I did like this recording, but it took me a bit of getting used to the voice of the man recording it. His voice is rather deep and soothing, and I would sometimes find myself feeling a bit drowsy when listening, so I'd take a break and listen to some swingin' tunes for awhile before going back to it.

In the Mini-series Little Dorrit seemed to me to be Not Quite A Mary-Sue, but unsprprisingly she seemed to me to have more three-dimensionality in the book. Even so, her One Fault can be summed up thus: such complete selflessness as to value others needs far above her own and be blinded to others faults--which isn't so much a fault as it is a virtue taken a bit too far in the extreme. And perhaps the not-quite-Mary-Sue ness was encouraged by the fact that she was surrounded by such interesing quirky characters--some sad, scary, funny, odd, but all unique and interesting, all surrounding quiet little unassuming Amy Dorrit.

As a background to the story of Little Dorrit, this book includes rather interesting commentary and satire on government and bureaucracy, debt and speculation, family relations. I won't expound on this right now, partly because I feel like I don't have enough knowledge/experience in these subjects to really do the topic justice, but I will say that through this book Dickens puts forward some valuable thoughts on these topics and others.

I don't really have something spoilerific to say about this one. Enjoyed it muchly... thank you, Mr. Dickens.