Our Mutual Friend Readalong

I'm definitely up for Little Dorrit 🙋‍♀️ I haven't read it but I know the plot because I watched the BBC serial a couple of years ago (adapted by Andrew Davies and staring Claire Foy, Matthew Macfadyen and Tom Courtney) and thought it was fab.
Thank you so much for running the OMF read along Piggy I've really enjoyed it

I’m happy with Little Dorrit.

I too have just popped in to see what you might be planning next!! I'd be up for another Dickens Readalong and have read very few to be honest. Please can we have some advance warning of what and when as it's a bit of a nightmare getting my hands on English books these days (thanks Brexit!) and I got OMF really late and never caught up!! Kindle works of course but there's something about classics that makes me want to read an actual book.

Hi @Piggywaspushed ! Thanks for the add.

Life intruded far too much over the last couple of months, but would love to start another readalong. I'll read anything.

I really enjoyed OUAR.

Mill on the Floss would be a good companion novel to OMF, I think!

Hi I've been lurking at the end of this thread to see what you're deciding on a new readalong. I haven't read any of the Dickens books mentioned earlier and would love to join in whatever you decide on. Am only 37% through OMF but I will have loads more reading time in a month when uni finishes up so will definitely be blasting through it.

I haven’t read any of those Piggy.

The only ones I have read are OMF, DC, A Christmas Carol, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist and A Tale Of Two Cities.

I’m up for another Dickens read along!

I found this a slog and perhaps it wasn't the best book to attempt to get over a Dickens aversion.

I love some of the language of Dickens but find the plots a struggle to follow particularly in the installment format. I find there are too many characters who are not always distinct enough or who don't appear to have a point to the furtherance of the plot.

I do think he evokes a certain feel and covers very valid points about issues in that age, but overall for me the convoluted plots and myriad of characters are too confusing and ultimately not enjoyable.

I've really enjoyed the discussions along the way and have found them invaluable and incredibly interesting. I've really appreciated the thoughtfulness and time that have gone into them, but they sadly have not convinced me that more Dickens would be worth my time.

I'm avoiding it Piggy

I also finished the book at the beginning of the month but didn't make any notes so prompted by your insightful comments:

I started out being irritated by Jenny Wren but she grew on me, (with her tricks and manners) I thought the reversal of her referring to her drunken father as though he was her wayward child had a dark humour to it.
I was also delighted to see she was paired up with Sloppy at the end, it really is true that there's someone out there for everyone, at least in Dickens universe.
Interestingly the BBC serial left out the whole Fledgeby subplot but Miss Wren was quite prominent.

The most memorable character for me was the villainous Headstone, and I did have a sneaking sympathy for him, not because he was a self made man who rose above his position in life, but because his actions were completely driven by an obsessive love for Lizzie who sends him quite demented. He does get his just desserts along with Rogue Riderhood, but that horrible little shite Charley Hexham gets off scot free, maybe karma catches up with him in his loveless marriage!

I agree that the female characters are fairly weak and one dimensional, but then I suppose you don't read Dickens for his well rounded depictions of women.

Rokesmith comes across as a bit creepy where Bella is concerned in the book, but even more so in the BBC adaptation, where he is constantly lurking in the shadows, staring and spying on her, I'd have been taking out a restraining order rather than buying a hat if I'd been Bella.

I was amazed that Eugene made a recovery, I was thinking to myself whilst they were reading the last rites and he was marrying Lizzie on his supposed death bed that it's a cliche in fiction that people who are dying seem to have certain knowledge of that fact and never stage a recovery, when blow me down with a feather if he didn't go and do that very thing! Perhaps he had to be seen to have given up all hope of life before Dickens could allow him to make a match with one of such a lowly social class. It's sad that the only way Wrayburn and Lizzie can end up married is that he gets beaten within an inch of his life and she becomes his carer. It seems that's the only way Dickens could bridge the social divide and even then they are the subject of malicious gossip, and she vows to make herself 'worthy' of him, despite the fact that it's been clear all along that she's worth ten of him. Whilst he muses on the idea of moving to the New World as in Australia they may be more accepted as a couple in society.

This wasn't one of my favourite Dickens, I much preferred Great Expectations and David Copperfield, probably Nicholas Nickleby would be ahead of it too, but it's certainly up there with Bleak House and I still fully intend to read all Dickens books eventually, although I am starting to mix up which minor characters are in which novel the more I read!

I finished it a few weeks ago now but I did make some notes as I knew I would have forgotten most of it by now.

I missed the bit about Headstone rubbing out his name. I do agree that Jenny Wren was a pointless character - you could easily take her out and it would make no difference to the overall story.

Having said that, the chapter where the Lammles put pepper up Fledgeby’s nose was hilarious, especially when Jenny Wren then ‘helped’ him and rubbed more pepper in his wounds! So I liked her in that chapter.

There were actually several funny moments in these final chapters. I loved the ‘inexhaustible baby’ that kept turning up to disrupt matters! And the clergy couple the Milveys - when she were talking about everyone seeming to get ill whenever a clergyman goes near them - ‘Frank never makes acquaintance with a new old woman, but she gets the face-ache’.

I also loved the idea of the aviary that Rokesmith created for Bella - ‘they came to a charming aviary, in which a number of tropical birds, more gorgeous in colour than the flowers, were flying about; and among those birds were gold and silver fish, and mosses, and water-lilies, and a fountain, and all manner of wonders.’ I would LOVE this in my house! It wasn’t very clear though whether it was real or just a wall painted to look like that.

Bella didn’t seem too bothered about the fact that everyone had been lying to her for months! I suppose she didn’t really have much choice except to accept it though, did she? Divorce wasn’t a realistic option for women in those days.

I also liked that Twemlow had the last word.

This is my least favourite of the six Dickens novels I’ve read so far. There were bits I struggled with, but there were bits I really enjoyed. I’m glad I’ve read it, but I’m not sure it’s one I will reread in the future whereas I do want to reread the other five.

So, all the loose ends got tied up and everyone got their just desserts, which was pretty satisfying.

I thought Dickens did a good job of mis-stepping of the reader - the big reveal was not (as you might have expected) that John Harmon was still alive, because you found that out pretty early on. Rather, the clever twist was that Boffin was in on 'Rokesmith's' identity from early on, was never a miser, never had anything to fear from Wegg, and his main reason for pretending to be a miser was to scare Bella away from marrying for money. It makes sense of why Boffin’s transformation into a miser was never very convincing (turns out Dickens actually did know what he was about). But it was actually a pretty horrible deception/manipulation of Bella to inveigle her into marriage, which felt uncomfortably creepy to me.

I liked the hint that Sloppy and Jennie Wren were going to get together, and I thought that Mr Riah's wise observation that it only takes one Jewish person to do something wrong for the whole race to be condemned was nicely done. Bella was rewarded for her retreat from money-grabbing with domestic bliss, but I found Lizzie's trajectory more interesting, with the implication that the reward for her virtue is not as straightforward - she has made a good match, but society is never going to accept her and Eugene will always be a subject of worldly ridicule for his choice.

Overall, I really enjoyed spending time in this richly-intertwined world being gently amused (and frequently baffled) by Dickens' witty prose. Could have done without the Veneering/Tremlow chapters. If this is one of Dickens' not-so-good ones, I'll definitely be trying out some of the others (I think I read Nicholas Nickleby and possibly DC as a teenager, but its all a bit vague).

That bit was hilarious Piggy!

I’ve just finished watching the BBC adaptation. It does stick pretty closely to the storyline, but I think I would have found it very confusing if I hadn’t already read the book. Lots of well known names in it!