“Susan Hill spent a year reading or re-reading only books she could already find somewhere in the house.”

Which resulted in the book Howards End is on the Landing.

Here is Susan on Dickens:

…Yes, he is sentimental, yes, he has purple passages, yes, his plots sometimes have dropped stitches, yes, some of his characters are quite tiresome. But his literary imagination was the greatest ever, his world of teeming life is as real as has ever been invented, his conscience, his passion for the underdog, the poor, the cheated, the humiliated are god-like. He created an array of varied, vibrant, living, breathing men and women and children that is breathtaking in its scope. His scenes are painted like those of an Old Master, in vivid colour and richness on huge canvases. His prose is spacious, symphonic, infinitely flexible. He can portray evil and create a menacing atmosphere of malevolence better than any other writer – read Little Dorritt, read Our Mutual Friend, read Bleak House if you don’t believe me.

normblog

I’m still plugging my way through Little Dorrit; it’s been ages that I’ve been reading the book, cramming in chapters here and there, between all my other reading duties and responsibilities. I like the sentimentality, I like the goodness of Little Dorrit and I delight in “his world of teeming life,” I really do. Although, inevitably, after I spend time with the Victorians I want to read simpler and more slender volumes, contemporary things that are smooth with modernity.