I enjoyed Cold Mountain, notwithstanding its several factual errors about domestic culture (e.g., errors about preserves, and how to make potato salad, and women's dress). And then when I got to the part where Ada imparts the whole "thrilling plot" of Little Dorrit to Ruby, I thought, not very reasonably: come on, a book called Little Dorrit can't be that exciting.
But it was!
Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit, serialized from 1855-57, is now my favorite of his books apart from Great Expectations. In its day it was relatively unpopular and unsuccessful because it was deemed too depressing (which, if you consider much of the rest of Dickens' oeuvre, must have been very depressing indeed). That reputation has dogged the novel, which hasn't enjoyed the popular revival of Oliver Twist or A Tale of Two Cities, is too long for most English classes, and is plagued by a dreadful soppy title. But what a novel! Once you get past the fabulously boring first few pages describing the hot, dusty, dissolute and largely irrelevant seaport of Marseilles, a location barely revisited in and serving no purpose to the rest of the novel (I think his editor must have said, "Give me a story that isn't set in a London slum, Chuck") you get a savagely satiric, intricately constructed story about how bad families can be--and indeed these families are so very bad that even after the 700th page you (that is, I, and Ada) still don't want the novel to end. The angry bits, where Dickens excoriates the cruel, selfish, and hypocritical, are among the best of his angry bits: see how Little Dorrit's awful, snobbish father rebukes her for all her loving care! See how weak and useless gentlemen prey on their plucky offspring! See how sweet but spoiled girls marry rotten selfish men--and *SPOILER* never get rescued! The tender bits are unfortunately a bit too sentimental, but not as sentimental as some of his worst stuff (Bleak House), and Amy Dorrit (called "Little" because she's been starved and deprived into, uh, midgethood--I don't know if Dickens meant to make this funny or not, but it kind of is) makes a wonderful heroine: smart, practical, good to the core, but not stupid about it. The funny bits are howlers: I sat on the couch laughing and sobbing and forcing Karl to listen as I read the funny bits aloud--though they didn't seem so funny out of context, without the benefit of knowing who each of the 36 characters referenced in each joke were. The Marshalsea debtors' prison in which much of the action is set is a wonderful location whose atmosphere, inhabitants, culture, and language Dickens employs to marvelous effect.
I highly recommend this book to everybody, including Dickens newbies. It restored my faith in Dickens that had been somewhat shattered by Oliver Twist and Bleak House: I was beginning to think that I'd read all the books of his that were worth reading. I am very glad to say that I was wrong, and that I feel energized to tackle Our Mutual Friend and a whole bunch of others now.
FYI: The film version of Cold Mountain was awful, but just in a boring way, not a ferocious enjoyable way. Speaking of which, did anybody else see the Zeffirelli version of Jane Eyre with the oddly miscast William Hurt as Rochester? And the oddly invented scenes in which Jane returns to Gateshead at the end of the novel to find that St. John Rivers is the doctor (?) attending her Aunt Reed? St. John was played by Sam West, who had last been seen as the ill-fated Leonard Bast in Howards End. I have this Leonard Bast moment every morning when I walk past my bookshelves: they've been wobbling lately. I should keep up with the blogging, so that if I should be crushed under a bookshelf, at least people will notice I'm missing.
