Little Dorrit
by Charles Dickens (read by Anton Lesser)
Penguin Books (audiobook)
Ask which Dickens novel is my favourite, and the reply will change on any given day. But my answer most often shuttles between Our Mutual Friend and Little Dorrit, read for Penguin by masterly stage actor Anton Lesser. He was one of many superb actors who graced the BBC's equally superb recent adaptation - he played Mr Merdle, the enigmatic banker described by almost everyone in London as 'the name of the age'. Dickens' plot proves this to be true, although not in the way his characters suspect - Merdle proves that adage, reinforced by the recent financial crisis, that if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Lesser reads Merdle perfectly, but is flexible enough to render the other parts with gusto and fine feeling. His Arthur Clennam and Little Dorrit are almost as restrained as Mr Merdle, only here we feel the emotions threatening to break the surface. His Mr Dorrit, the debtor whose rags to riches story shapes the novel as a whole, is funny, frustrating and ultimately moving. Lesser's Little Dorrit provides an eloquent justification of the audiobook form. Sometimes Lesser really is more.
