Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit

Of the fifteen Dickens novels listed here, I am familiar with about half. Some of the stories I read in high school. Studying Great Epectations with Mrs Dysart made such an impression on me that even today, when, for whatever reason, the book comes to mind, I still see the same mental image that I saw so many years ago -- old Miss Haversham, in her faded, tattered wedding dress, sitting in a dark room with her cobweb-covered wedding cake nearby, embittered over the man who had jilted her at the altar.

I asked my son if he read any Dickens in his high school English classes. No, he said, he never did. What a pity!

Most of my familiarity of Dickens novels, however, comes from seeing them in movie form. And that's how I met Amy Dorrit, by viewing an eight-hour mini-series, made for TV and produced by BBC and WGBH Boston. The story was originally published in 19 monthly installments of 32 pages each and two illustrations by Phiz, a famous English artist, appeared between 1855 and 1857. It is a work of satire on the shortcomings of the government and society of the period.* Much of it takes place in London's Marshalsea, the debtor's prison, where Dickens' own father had been imprisoned when Dickens was a child. In Little Dorrit, Amy's father had been at the Marshalsea for years and Amy herself was born and raised there.

But poverty is not the only state of the Dorrit family through the course of the story. They come into a great fortune, and we watch as each member of the family has his or her own response to that wealth.

Little Dorrit extends quite beyond the family to a host of characters who bring the story to life. I found every episode to be captivating and every actor to bring out the most absurd or nobel traits, as the case may be, of Dickens' memorable characters.

One thing this mini-series has inspired me to do is to read Little Dorrit or some other of Dickens' work. Apart from A Christmas Carol, I don't think I have opened one of his books since those days in high school.

Since writing the last sentence I've put two of his books on hold at the library, Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend. I'll let you know how the reading goes! In the meantime, if you have any Dickens favorites, let us know. And if you watch Little Dorrit, let us know what you think.



*Wikipedia

The House at Riverton

Lately I've been entertaining the thought of writing a novel. Not a grand adventure or a whodunit -- nothing that is action driven -- and not a historical novel that require great attention to detail in areas where I have little expertise, but a story about daily life, friendship, aging and self-discovery. So far I've got some characters in mind and a bit of a plot, not much, but I thought I might be up to the challenge one of these days. But that notion was completely dashed by the time I had finished the first chapter of Kate Morton's House at Riverton.

She begins: "Last November I had a nightmare." Ninety-eight-year-old Grace Reeves tells the dream and talks about the letters that have come, dredging up old memories that she has spent a lifetime trying to forget. In the process she mentions people as if the reader already knew them -- Hannah, Ursula, Sylvia, Marcus, Ruth, Robbie, Emmeline -- people who have no faces, no personalities to the reader but surely do to Grace. And by the end of page five, I was a goner. Morton had succeeded in drawing me into one of the most intriguing stories I have ever read, just as she has captured the attention of thousands of other readers.

And that's when I knew that I'll need to do a lot more work than just have some characters and a bit of a plot if I'm ever going to write a novel. For not only is The House at Riverton a complex tale of intrigue, relationships and secrets, a sad and tragic story, it is also masterfully told.

When we first meet Grace she is living in a nursing home. She is talking to the reader, but much of the story is told to her grandson, Marcus, through cassette tape. The story takes place in the home of Lord Ashbury and Lady Violet, where Grace went into service at the age of 14. Flawlessly, Morton moves the reader back and forth from the early 1900s to 1998, unfolds the characters with great care, dropping a hint now and then of what their fate will one day be, but never giving away anyone's secrets.

As a matter of fact, the book revolves around secrets. Were I to go back through the book to count the secrets I would see how cleverly the author thought through her story in advance, working out the details and figuring just the right moment to weave them into the tale.

I may have mentioned before the father and daughter who have both written novels. He talked of the difference in their styles. The daughter worked furiously to create her characters and plot her story in advance, so when it was time to write the novel, she had no surprises. The hard work was already done and she simply told the story. The father, on the other hand, started out with his characters and a basic plot line then started to write, and in the writing got to know his characters and learn what they were up to. Well, The House at Riverton was a meticulously developed story in the author's mind long before she typed a word, I'm sure.

We say that the opening line of a story is the most important, and surely it is, because it is designed to capture the reader's attention. But the ending of a story is also important. I am thinking about two other  authors I have read. They both tell a delightful story, full of fun and adventure, but the endings of one author are weak and leave unanswered questions in my mind. The other author seems not to notice when her story is finished. In other words, a clear ending is as important as a strong beginning.

Kate Morton held my attention for 468 pages, and as I read the final page many aspects of the story finally came together. I held my breath, my eyes wide, as the significance of the details on that last page settled over me.

This is not a book you can just walk away from when you are finished. As a matter of fact, my last hour of reading was done in the parking lot of the library and I fully intended to return it once I was done. But I couldn't bring myself to take the book into the library after all. I started my car and drove home, where I could have The House at Riverton with me for just a few more days.

Take Note

Carol Estby Dagg grew up hearing the story of how her great-grandmother, Helga Estby, had walked from Mica Creek, Washington (near Spokane) to New York City.  It was a wager that set the stage for the trip: if she could make it to New York by the appointed time, she would earn $10,000 from a publisher who would publish their story.  Along the way she campaigned for women's suffrage.  Her traveling companion was her 17-year-old daughter, Clara.  The Year We Were Famous is a novel based on that remarkable adventure.

Through the book (told from Clara's point of view) we follow them along the east-west railroad lines over mountains, through desolate countryside, into Indian territory, small towns and major cities.  It's a perilous trip, filled with unexpected weather, injuries, and the mercy of total strangers.  Through it all, two strong-minded women are struggling to get to know themselves and each other.

Dagg grew up on the stories and wanted to share them with others, but she didn't have much meat for the bones of the story because, in the end of the women's journey the book was never published and their journals were destroyed.  She had to fill in the details with research and imagination.

I found Carole Estby Dagg's website as fascinating as the book itself.  She tells about her research -- reading books, diaries and women's magazines of the Victorian era, studying the railroad maps of the time, learning about frontier remedies for blisters, studying the habits of bears.  Writing classes, multiple drafts of the book, great patience, and fifteen years -- that's what it took for her to get this amazing story published.

I've read about novelists' research and writing methods.  Most have tickler files where they drop any pertinent information or ideas to save for just the right time.  Mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark chooses her charcters' names from browsing the obituaries.  Lee Strobel says that he enjoys the process of getting to know his characters as his books unfold.  His daughter, novelist Alison Strobel, on the other hand, has her entire story figured out before she even begins the writing process.  Some, like Peg Kehret, author of Five Pages a Day, and Left Behind's Jerry Jenkins, set a goal for the number of pages they will write in a day.

My friend, Joan Husby, has written numerous articles as well as several children's books and a collection of stories about her life in the Robe Valley near Granite Falls, called A Logger's Daughter: Growing Up in Washington's Woods. She is currently working on a couple of other books, a historical fiction about Monte Cristo and a fantasy for teens called Farview.  She says that research can go on for a long time, and you can get lost on rabbit trails!  Her books usually start with a place that grabs her attention, such as Monte Cristo.  It's near where she grew up and has an interesting background.  She's researching the Indian pre-history and the current farming of the area.  Once she's got her place, the develops her story, and then her characters.

She reads widely, grabbing details wherever she can find them.  She loves the fun of it -- having all the history and details she can glean from libraries, museums, newspapers, online and through interviews.  She immerses herself in the location and the period, keeping open to any information that might inspire part of the plot.  For example, Joan became pen pals with the lighthouse keepers on Egg Island off Vancouver Island.  When she visited them she took notes and pictures and copied information they provided for her.  She met visitors -- work crew members, other light keepers, helicopter pilots who delivered people to the island or whomever -- and she listened to their fascinating stories.  Some of these stories worked themselves into one of her children's books.

Joan says she used to do notes by hand.  Now she types them or cuts and pastes them into desktop folders.  She has found the free software program Evernote to be a great tool for taking notes.

Although I doubt there's a novel in me, if there is, I think I will enjoy the research phase every bit as much as the writing phase.