This is a book that got me to miss my tube stop twice in the few weeks I needed to read it because I was so much into it. Charles Dickens weaves the thread of his story in a masterful way. The dialogues make the characters walk out of the page, the descriptions make Victorian London come to life and the parodies of Government and Society are absolutely spot on and still valid today.

Thank you Mr Dickens for making my commuting so enjoyable!

I was going home by tube, reading my book, when suddenly I looked up and realised I had just missed my stop. It doesn’t happen to me often: I can even fall asleep and wake up in time to get off. So missing my stop because of a book must mean I was so engrossed in it, it must be very good! And indeed it is!

Not only do I love this book (so far) but knowing, and being able to visualise, most of the places mentionned in it makes it even more engaging, more alive.

Read and loved Bleak House, followed by the wonderful BBC adaptation: those two things complete, I was bereft: what next? Shaw’s comment that LD is what inspired him to be a socialist was intriguing, so Little Dorrit it was. 125 pages in, I stalled. My bad. My own pace was off, couldn’t match it with Dickens’. Instead watched the 1988 adaptation of the book which, though terribly truncated, was still quite good: the Circumlocution Office, the horrible despair and apathy was palpable, Flintwitch (wonderfully, sleazily nasty), Jacobi, Guinness, and the actress who plays LD. Dorrit’s breakdown scene was mesmerizing: so painful to watch.

But, what next?