Seven Novels

#3 Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens

Little Dorrit has all the bigness of Dicken’s best books. People rise to riches and crash to ruin. Almost every major character seems bent on destroying himself or herself, except Little Dorrit.

Embedded in the story is a powerful expose of a rigid religiosity that takes the name of the Lord in vain by attempting to use God to punish and control others.

The 2009 Masterpiece Theater version does well not to follow the book's two-part plan. Although the book works well when it reveals the meaning of part one's events through part two, an earlier Masterpiece version suffered from that approach.

Little Dorrit’s flaws, which keep it from ranking number 1 in my canon, are the farcial circumlocution office, which is overwritten, and the vague treatment of the engineering details at Clenham and Doyce.

Continue with the Countdown: Book #2