I read this because it was the book for my Victorian Literary Society meeting.  I had recently watched the latest BBC adaptation (with Clarie Foy) and so was quite keen to read the novel.

It is very long – my copy went to 900 pages.

Here’s the synopsis from Wikipedia …

The novel begins in Marseille with the notorious murderer Rigaud informing his cellmate that he has murdered his wife. Also in the town is Arthur Clennam, who is returning to London to see his mother following the death of his father, with whom he had lived for twenty years in China. As he died, his father had given Arthur a mysterious watch, murmuring, “Your mother.” Naturally Arthur had assumed that it was intended for Arthur’s mother Mrs. Clennam, whom he and the world supposed to be his mother.

Inside the watch casing was an old silk paper with the initials D N F (Do Not Forget) worked into it in beads. It was a message, but when Arthur shows it to harsh and implacable Mrs. Clennam, a religious fanatic, she refuses to reveal what it means, and the two become estranged.

In London, William Dorrit, imprisoned as a debtor, has been a resident of Marshalsea debtor’s prison for so long that his children — snobbish Fanny, idle Edward (known as Tip), and Amy (known as Little Dorrit) — have all grown up there, though they are free to pass in and out of the prison as they please. Amy is devoted to her father and through her sewing, has been financially supporting the two of them.

Once in London, Arthur is reacquainted with his former fiancée Flora Finching, who is now overweight and simpering. Arthur’s mother, Mrs. Clennam, although paralysed and a wheelchair user, still runs the family business with the help of her servant Jeremiah Flintwinch and his downtrodden wife Affery. When Arthur learns that Mrs. Clennam has employed Little Dorrit as a seamstress, showing her unusual kindness, he wonders if the young girl might be connected with the mystery of the watch. Suspecting that his mother played a part in the misfortunes of the Dorrits, Arthur follows the girl to the Marshalsea. He vainly tries to inquire about William Dorrit’s debt at the poorly run Circumlocution Office and acts as a benefactor to her father and brother. While at the Circumlocution Office, Arthur meets the struggling inventor Daniel Doyce, whom he decides to help by becoming his business partner. The grateful Little Dorrit falls in love with Arthur, much to the dismay of the son of the Marshalsea jailer, John Chivery, who has loved her since childhood; Arthur, however, fails to recognize Amy’s interest. At last, aided by the indefatigable debt-collector Pancks, Arthur discovers that William Dorrit is the lost heir to a large fortune and he is finally able to pay his way out of prison.

William Dorrit decides that as a now respectable family they should go on a tour of Europe. They travel over the Alps and take up residence for a time in Venice, and finally in Rome, carrying, with the exception of Amy, an air of conceit at their new-found wealth. Eventually after a spell of delirium, Mr. Dorrit dies in Rome, and his distraught brother Frederick, a kindhearted musician, who has always stood by him, also passes away. Amy is left alone and returns to London to stay with newly married Fanny and her husband, the foppish Edmund Sparkler.

The fraudulent dealings (similar to a Ponzi scheme) of Mr. Merdle who is Edmund Sparkler’s stepfather leads to the collapse of Merdle’s bank after his suicide, taking with it the savings of both the Dorrits and Arthur Clennam, who is now himself imprisoned in the Marshalsea. While there, he is taken ill and is nursed back to health by Amy. The French villain Rigaud, now in London, discovers that Mrs. Clennam has been hiding the fact that Arthur is not her real son, and Rigaud attempts to blackmail her. Arthur’s biological mother was a beautiful young singer with whom his father had gone through a ceremony of sorts before being pressured by his wealthy uncle to marry the present Mrs. Clennam. Mrs. Clennam had agreed to bring up the child on condition that its mother never see him. After Arthur’s real mother had died of grief at being separated from her child and its father, the uncle, stung by remorse, had left a bequest to Arthur’s mother and to “the youngest daughter of her patron”, a kindly musician who had taught and befriended her—and who happened to be Amy Dorrit’s uncle, Frederick. As Frederick Dorrit had no daughter, the legacy goes to the youngest daughter of Frederick’s brother, who is William Dorrit, Amy’s father.

Mrs. Clennam has been suppressing her knowledge that Amy is the heiress to an estate. Overcome by passion, Mrs. Clennam rises from her chair and totters out of her house to reveal the secret to Amy and to beg her forgiveness, which the kindhearted girl freely grants. Mrs. Clennam then falls down in the street—never to recover the use of her speech or limbs—as the house of Clennam literally collapses before her eyes, killing Rigaud. Rather than hurt Arthur, Amy chooses not to reveal what she has learnt, though this means that she misses her legacy.

When Arthur’s business partner Daniel Doyce returns from Turkey a wealthy man, Arthur is released and his fortunes revived, and Arthur and Amy are married.

Like many of Dickens novels, Little Dorritcontains numerous subplots. One subplot concerns Arthur Clennam’s friends, the kindhearted Meagles. They are upset when their daughter Pet marries an artist called Gowan and when their servant and foster daughter Tattycoram is lured away from them to the sinister Miss Wade, an acquaintance of the criminal Rigaud. Miss Wade hates men, and it turns out she is the jilted sweetheart of Gowan.

The novel is split into two books and I found the first book interesting and compelling, but got completely bogged down in the second. Both books needed editing (can I say that about Dickens?), but the second seemed full on unnecessary padding.

In the BBC adaptation Andrew Davies shifted some of the events around in time and it all seemed much less muddled. I guess when you write it as a series of installments you can’t go back later and change the order of the events.

And what about the will? Leaving money for the second daughter of the brother of the benefactor (if the benefactor doesn’t have children) thus linking Amy and Arthur – all seems a bit far fetched to me.

Next up on my Dickens reading Bleak House (I hear it’s very bleak!)

Here’s someone else’s thoughts …

http://court-merrigan.blogspot.com/2009/02/book-review-little-dorrit.html

http://wmtc.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-im-reading-little-dorrit-finally.html

http://www.rulethewaves.net/blog/?p=1608

I know it’s July because the Tour De France is on and Janet Evanovich has another Stephanie Plum novel out. I was a late arrival to the Stephanie Plum novels a member at my book club recommended them as ‘racy and pacy’. I’ve been addicted since I read the first one.

These are light novels – I think I read this one in three hours – but they’re witty and fun to read.

Here’s the blurb …

It is summertime in Jersey and our favourite bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is up to her old antics, joined by her gang of memorable characters: Grandma, Lulu, Connie, Vinnie and Mooner. Someone wants to kill Vinnie, Lula s involved in a shabby investment scheme while Stephanie is chasing a dangerous crim. Adding even more heat to Stephanie s life are those two sizzling hot heroes… it s Ranger days and Morelli nights (Or perhaps it’s the other way ’round). Get ready for some grand-scale fun. With hilarious capers and action galore, this is a laugh-a-minute Stephanie Plum novel not to be missed!

There are a lot of hilarious moments in this novel and Lula and Stephanie are as incompetentant as ever. However, there isn’t as much Morelli and/or Ranger action in this one and that’s what I like the best.

These novels are a guilty pleasure; completely over the top and a bit trashy. I like to think of them as the white bread of the reading world and I’m definitely looking forward to them being made into movies.

Here are some other reviews …

http://www.booksandotherthoughts.com/2010/07/sizzling-sixteen.html

http://tansyrr.com/tansywp/how-stephanie-plum-lost-her-sizzle/

http://lightheartedlibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/just-read-sizzling-sixteen-by-janet-evanovich/

I picked up a copy of this novel from a second-hand book store while on holiday.

Here’s the blurb

Rickie Elliot, a sensitive and intelligent young man with an intense imagination and a certain amount of literary talent, sets out from Cambridge full of hopes to become a writer. But when his stories are not successful he decides instead to marry the beautiful but shallow Agnes, agreeing to abandon his writing and become a schoolmaster at a second-rate public school. Giving up his hopes and values for those of the conventional world, he sinks into a world of petty conformity and bitter disappointments.

The start reminded my of Brideshead Revisited …

I enjoyed this novel. It is a quiet story about the development of one character.

There is a fabulous interpretation here

Here’s the blurb …

Jean Baggott is ‘the girl on the wall’ – a 1948 photograph taken of her when she was eleven – whose life was never going to be remarkable and the pinnacle of whose achievements would come from being a wife and a mother. Almost 60 years later, with her children gone, dealing with the loss of the love of her life, Jean began the education denied to her as a girl. Inspired by ceilings of Lincolnshire’s Burghley House and by the History degree she had begun, Jean began to stitch a tapestry which looked back at her life and the changing world around her. It took sixteen months to complete. The tapestry consists of over 70 intersecting circles, each telling some aspect of her life. Some represent extraordinary events such as the moon landings or world historical news stories like the Cuban Missile Crisis; some circles comment on famous people and places she remembers, others about the music she loves – Pink Floyd – and the games she played as a child, and growing up during the second world war with her brothers. Each chapter of “The Girl on the Wall” features a circle from the tapestry and Jean’s accompanying narrative, exploring the circle and the memories it evokes. It reveals an ordinary life in extraordinary detail. The result is a truly unique, touching portrait of a seemingly average British woman’s life. To stand back and look at the tapestry is to be struck by the richness of one human journey – from 1940 to the present day. The girl on the wall would be proud. The book includes a full-colour pull-out of Jean’s tapestry inside the back cover.

This is an amazing memoir if only for the sheer ordinariness of Jean’s life. I really enjoyed reading about her childhood during the war, the rationing (and the fact that it continued for a long time after the war), the terrible winter, that you were expected to be a wife and mother by 21. It is the every day details that make this a great memoir – bits of every day life that historians would consider irrelevant.

I did find the book somewhat repeatitious, but I think this was because each chapter was designed to stand alone (and be about a circle) and some things were told twice.

I’m amazed that the entire tapestry was finished in 16  months! One circle would probably take me that long – what an amazing achievement and what a great legacy to leave for her grand children.

Solaris Ian McEwan’s latest novel. It is the story of Michael Beard a physicist who in his youth discovered the Beard-Einstein conflation for which he was awarded the Nobel prize. Since receiving the prize he has done little physics choosing instead to use his fame to receive grants and positions. One of which is at the ‘National Centre for Renewable Energy’. Here he meets the young and enthusiastic Tom Aldous. 

Michael Beard has been married five times and his fifth wife, Patrice, is having an affair (in retaliation to all of his affairs) with their builder. Beard takes this defection hard and to try to take his mind off the situation he accepts a trip to a glacier in the arctic circle so he witness the effects of global warming for himself. This involves an hilarious (and painful) journey on a snow mobile. On his return he discovers that Patrice has moved on from the builder and is now having an affair with Tom Aldous. A series of events unfold from this crises (I won’t spoil it for anyone) which leads ultimately (and deservedly) to Beard’s downfall.

Michael Beard is a particularly unattractive character; always looking out for himself and treating people (particularly women) very badly.

The writing is beautiful and I kept reading to the end despite loathing Beard. This novel isn’t about global warming and the need to find a clean energy source – it’s simply the frame used to portray a brilliant man whose won success seems to be his undoing.

I don’t think this is McEwan at his best, but I still think it’s worth a read.

Here are some other reviews

http://leekonstantinou.com/2010/05/08/beards-women-or-the-problem-with-ian-mcewans-solar-2010/

http://book-drunk.blogspot.com/2010/05/solar-by-ian-mcewan.html

I read about this novel on Cornflower Books – I can’t find the reference now it might even be in a comment somewhere – anyway I thought if I see it around I’ll grab a copy and then, on the very day, I find it in a second hand book store. I had no idea what to expect, but I loved it. It contains a wealth of domestic detail about raising three children and just how hard (and messy) that can be.

This is the description from Allen &  Unwin

In a novel reminiscent of the work of Penelope Lively, Anne Tyler, and Alice Munro, acclaimed author Marina Endicott gives us one of the most profound and most memorable reads of the year.
Absorbed in her own failings, Clara Purdy crashes her life into a sharp left turn, taking the young family in the other car along with her. When bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer, Clara – against all habit and comfort – moves the three children and their terrible grandmother into her own house.
We know what is good, but we don’t do it. In Good to a Fault, Clara decides to give it a try, and then has to cope with the consequences: exhaustion, fury, hilarity, and unexpected love. But she must question her own motives. Is she acting out of true goodness, or out of guilt? Most shamefully, has she taken over simply because she wants the baby for her own?
What do we owe in this life, and what do we deserve? This compassionate, funny, and fiercely intelligent novel looks at life and death through grocery-store reading glasses: being good, being at fault, and finding some balance on the precipice.

The writing is magnificent. Marina Endicott using free indirect style to great effect – we move in and out of the heads of most of the characters and therefore understand and sympathise with their lives.

Do we do our good deeds expecting gratitude or recognition? I think we probably do and I felt for Clara when things didn’t turn out quite how she expected.

I think this is domestic fiction at it’s best – it forces us to think about own motivations and assumptions.

Here are some other reviews …

http://kirbc.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/good-to-a-fault-by-marina-endicott/

http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2009_05_014524.php

http://shereadsandreads.blogspot.com/2009/02/good-to-fault-by-marina-endicott-review.html

I read a review of this novel in The Australian and simply had to have it. Here is the description from Harper Collins …

What has happened to Ingrid?

Beautiful Ingrid inherits a fortune and leaves Australia, and her friends, and Ralph who loves her, to marry Gil Grey and set up home amid the New York art world. There she becomes the stepmother to Gil?s teenage artist daughter Fleur, a former child prodigy, and studies ancient curse scrolls at Columbia University.

But at 9am on September 11, 2001, she has an appointment downtown. And is never seen again.

Or is she?

Searching for clues about Ingrid?s life a year later, her friend Julia uncovers only further layers of mystery and deception.

Both an unputdownable mystery and a compelling meditation on the nature of art, truth, friendship and love, THE LEGACY announces the arrival of a major new talent.

This novel is a modern re-telling of James’s The Portrait of a Lady plus a bit of an extension. It’s been a long time since I’ve read The Portrait of a Lady but I remember after a couple of false starts that I loved it. This novel is in three parts and the first part closely resembles James’s novel (although obviously with a modern setting), part two and part three move into new territory. I really enjoyed reading this novel – I didn’t want it to end. The things that have really stuck in my mind was first how well she described an Australian university experience (it reminded me of my time at Uni), secondly the effect of the collapse of the World Trade Center on New Yorkers and thirdly the sense of place Ms Tranter created. The writing is spectacular (and unobtrusive). I didn’t once think it needed more editing (very unusual) and the characters are fabulous, completely believable. Here’s a reading guide, and a review and another review.

 I do quite like Salley Vickers – I haven’t read everything she has written, but the bits I have read I enjoyed. I borrowed a copy of this book from a friend.

My Book club is reading The Interpretation of Murder. One of the member’s library suggested it.

My overwhelming impression is one of confusion. At first I found it compelling, but then I couldn’t seem to get to the end. Here’s the blurb …

In this ingenious, suspenseful historical thriller, Sigmund Freud is drawn into the mind of a sadistic killer who is savagely attacking Manhattan’s wealthiest heiresses
Inspired by Sigmund Freud’s only visit to America, The Interpretation of Murderis an intricate tale of murder and the mind’s most dangerous mysteries. It unfurls on a sweltering August evening in 1909 as Freud disembarks from the steamship George Washington, accompanied by Carl Jung, his rival and protege. Across town, in an opulent apartment high above the city, a stunning young woman is found dangling from a chandelier—whipped, mutilated, and strangled. The next day, a second beauty—a rebellious heiress who scorns both high society and her less adventurous parents—barely escapes the killer. Yet Nora Acton, suffering from hysteria, can recall nothing of her attack. Asked to help her, Dr. Stratham Younger, America’s most committed Freudian analyst, calls in his idol, the Master himself, to guide him through the challenges of analyzing this high-spirited young woman whose family past has been as complicated as his own. The Interpretation of Murderleads readers from the salons of Gramercy Park, through secret passages, to Chinatown—even far below the currents of the East River where laborers are building the Manhattan Bridge. As Freud fends off a mysterious conspiracy to destroy him, Younger is drawn into an equally thrilling adventure that takes him deep into the subterfuges of the human mind. Â Richly satisfying, elegantly crafted, The Interpretation of Murder marks the debut of a brilliant, spectacularly entertaining new storyteller.

I found the characters convincing, but the plot was a bit too clever for me. Rubenfeld does a great job of creating early 20th century New York. I enjoyed all of the references to the buildings, constructing the Manhattan Bridge and the social niceties (in fact that bit reminded me of Edith Wharton).  There are many twists and turns in this story (too many for me) and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone by revealing the ending. I will, however, say that, despite my confusion, I did think it was a reasonable ending.

I think this novel would make a great movie and I might even read it again to see if I can follow all the twists.

Here’s the novel’s website …

http://www.interpretationofmurder.com/

A reading group guide …

http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/interpretation_of_murder1.asp

and another review …

http://mybookshelf.wordpress.com/2010/02/10/the-interpretation-of-murder-jed-rubenfield/

I’m a bit of a knitter (see my knitting blog), so I read the Friday Night Knitting Club which was OK – certainly light entertainment (but I don’t have a problem with that).

Once I’d finished the Bronte, I decided I needed something that could be read quickly with little concentration so I picked up Knit Two  the sequel to Friday Night Knitting Club.

Here’s the blurb from Penguin …

The Sequel to the Beloved #1 New York Times Bestseller The Friday Night Knitting Club
The sequel to the number-one New York Times bestseller The Friday Night Knitting Club, KNIT TWO returns to Walker and Daughter, the Manhattan knitting store founded by Georgia Walker and her young daughter, Dakota. Dakota is now an eighteen-year-old freshman at NYU, running the little yarn shop part-time with help from the members of the Friday Night Knitting Club.

Drawn together by the sense of family the club has created, the knitters rely on one another as they struggle with new challenges: for Catherine, finding love after divorce; for Darwin, the hope for a family; for Lucie, being both a single mom and a caregiver for her elderly mother; and for seventysomething Anita, a proposal of marriage from her sweetheart, Marty, that provokes the objections of her grown children.

As the club’s projects—an afghan, baby booties, a wedding coat—are pieced together, so is their understanding of the patterns underlying the stresses and joys of being mother, wife, daughter, and friend. Because it isn’t the difficulty of the garment that makes you a great knitter: it’s the care and attention you bring to the craft—as well as how you adapt to surprises

I liked it. I liked how the focus was on finding what it is you want and then doing that. I also liked all of the knitting references and the sense of community created by the women.

Having said that, I’m not sure I’ll read the third (if there is a third).

http://seattlecoffeeintherain.blogspot.com/2009/11/kate-jacobs-knit-two.html

http://esheley.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/does-the-dog-die-a-brief-review-of-knit-two-by-kate-jacobs/