I've seen BBC's miniseries of Little Dorrit numerous times, it's one of my favorites, and parts of the end have always remained a little confusing in my mind. In an effort to clear those up, I decided to read it for my classic.
The story of Little Dorrit is a long and complex story with numerous threads that don't seem to relate to each other. In the end, though, you can see how each thread was part of a large tapestry that created a complete story.
Amy Dorrit was born in the Marshalsea prison and has been caring for her father her entire life. Her siblings have been able to create lives for themselves outside the prison walls, but Amy is devoted to her father. She meets Arthur Clennam, a man twice her age and notices his beautiful spirit. Arthur sees her as a child, while she sees someone she can lose her heart to.
There's so much to this story that I can't really give a full description without getting too wordy, but I can tell you there's so many aspects. Intrigue, mystery and secrets abound, but so do the descriptions. Dickens can weave a great tale, but about halfway through, I found myself skimming a lot, especially when I hit the two complete pages of a single paragraph. With 533 pages, I knew it was going to be a long one, but it wore on me after a while.
In the end, I found that, for the most part, the miniseries was pretty close to the book in all the ways that mattered. Things here and there had been changed, but I was pretty content overall. I have to say that I still prefer the BBC version. It was a masterfully done series and the acting was great. Also, the TV version was less than 8 hours, while it takes more than twice that long to read the book.
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