Rating: 
Summary: A great work long unnoticed
Review: "Bleak House" may have been masterfully managed, but I preferred this tense tale of poverty, riches and the parasitic class that breeds both. It is as cautionary a tale as the former: the role of the machinery of government and capitalist class on the lives of all under them has never been so powerfully depicted. Mr Merdle was based on a real person, a Sadlier who killed himself in Hyde Park when he caused the Tipperary Bank to fail. Amy Dorrit is to be preferred to Esther Summerson as a heroine in not being so off-puttingly and impossibly sweet. Dickens' mastery of plot is such to create an exciting mystery and a rich interweaving of character and plot that kept me up all night unravelling the puzzle.
Rating: 
Summary: Well structured, just a little flat
Review: Almost as good as Bleak House. Two shortcomings, though. One, the poetry of the language never reaches the same heights. Dickens just doesn't seem as inspired here, and there are moments when he even seems tired and to be suffering from the same disappointment his characters complain of. Two, the mystery theme is pushed to the background and is lame in comparison. Otherwise, the structure is excellent, weaving the themes of the Circumlocution Office and self-imprisonment relatively seamlessly through the story. One reviewer here has commented that "Little Dorrit" is not without Dickens' trademark humor, and, with one qualification, I would agree. Mr F's Aunt, Mrs Plornish, and Edmund Sparkler in particular are all quite funny. Characters like William Dorrit and Flora Finching, however, who would have been funny in earlier books (eg, Wilkins Micawber and Dora Spenlow in "David Copperfield" it can be argued, are younger - and more romantic - versions of Dorrit and Flora) are only pathetic in this one. It is a sign of the change in Dickens that he can no longer see the lighter side of these characters. BTW, there is another little joke for those versed in Victorian Lit. The comedic couple Edmond Sparkler and Fanny Dorrit are a play on an earlier couple, Edmond Bertram and Fanny Price in Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park". The joke is that Dickens has taken the names and inverted the characters. Fanny Dorrit couldn't be more different than Fanny Price, and likewise Edmond Sparkler and Edmond Bertram. I'm sure this is not an accident. Dickens had a thing for the name Fanny, using it for two of his less appealing "temptresses", Fanny Squeers (in "Nicholas Nickleby") and of course Fanny Dorrit. Funny stuff. And speaking of Fanny Dorrit, I have one last comment. It is often said of Dickens that he couldn't create good female characters. This puts me in mind of Chesterton who related a similar complaint made by Dickens' male contemporaries that he couldn't describe a gentleman. As Chesterton deftly pointed out, however, what these gentlemen really meant was that Dickens couldn't (or wouldn't) describe gentlemen as they wished themselves to be described. Rather, Dickens described gentlemen as they actually appeared. I might say the same thing about the women who complain about Dickens' female characters. It's not so much that Dickens couldn't (or wouldn't) describe good female characters. Rather, it's that the kinds of characters he did describe aren't the ones the complanaints wish to see. Women praise the Elizabeth Bennetts of the book-world not because the real world is full of Liz Bennetts (it's not), but because that's the way they themselves wish to be seen. Truth is, however, there are far more Fanny Dorrits and Flora Finchings and Dora Spenlows than there are Liz Bennetts. The women who complain of these characters, though, would rather ignore this unflattering little fact. Whatever. The truth will out, and there's far too much truth in Dickens characters to be so lightly dismissed. 4 1/2 stars
Rating:
Summary: Worth a Journey
Review: Among the reasons to come to earth must surely be the chance to read this novel. Shaw called this novel a masterpiece among masterpieces. My opinion is that this novel is the greatest of the sixteen. It is less bland than Bleak House, more poignant than Copperfield. I started it desultorily, distracted greatly by events in my life. But gradually as I read it dawned on me that sentence by sentence Dickens was here at his most trenchant. I began to be charmed by the characters, some of the greatest in his oeuvre. For all the darkness in the conception--a girl born and raised in debtor's prison--Little Dorrit is a wonderful character. Arthur Clennam is a real man. I adore Flora's deranged speech and her tenderness. Fanny is a delight! And there are Doyce and Pancks--and the Meagles and Pet and Tattycoram--and there are so many secrets! And isn't Blandois the precursor of Fosco? Oh, I could go on. To the Circumlocution Office and Barnacles and Merdle - and Afferty and Flintwich and Mrs. Clennam--such a wonderful feast of characters--with the Marshallsea hovering over all.
How well Dickens uses dialogue to identify character; how amusing are their tics. The characters fall into strata. The main of them, characterized by Clennam, Doyce, and Pancks, are at the level of small businessmen, tradesmen. Below them are the destitutes. A little above them are Mrs. Clennam, Casby, the Meagles. And high above them the Merdles, Gowans, and the like. The novel finds its way at the lower levels--it's a novel of the lower middle class and the lower class and the poor--and down there is so much life and love and devotion. It was strong medicine for me, cognitively dissonant, for Little Dorrit to love with such devotion. And Clennam loves her so deeply though he had no love in his life to that point. Where did he find such love in himself?
Dickens does not just give the action. Unlike so many other writers (almost all), he lets the characters be themselves, revealing the plot from time to time as they get to it, but seldom hurrying. They are being themselves and leading their lives--of course caught up in the great machine of the novel; it's as though Dicken's characters' clothes get caught in the huge, creaking machinery of his plots which then tugs them along, or perhaps grinds them up...
The novel is too full of words. It's verbose. Many times I could not follow the sense. It's labored. There are plot shifts just for the sake of changing the experiment.
But as I finished the novel a benediction fell upon me--a moment that cannot be put into words.
Rating: 
Summary: A teen's review
Review: As much as on my age who loves to read I found this book very droll. I noticed how the writing style seams to read in circles confusing even the 4.0 students that attend my same high school but other than that I found the book a wonderful piece of art work but defiantly not for young adults.
Rating:
Summary: "None of your eyes at me! Take that!"
Review: Dickens' last novels (with the exception of the unfinished EDWIN DROOD) really form a group all to themselves: exceptionally concerned with the excesses of social institutions and the cruelties of high society, they in some ways read more like Trollope and Thackeray than they do Dickens' own earlier works, although they retain Dickens's fine gift for character and bite. LITTLE DORRIT is proabbly my favorite of the later works: its multiple stories are extremely gripping, and his satire at its sharpest and most necessary. Many people say these later novels are not as funny as his earlier works, but DORRIT is to me an exception: there are few funnier (or more dear) characters in Dickens' repertoire than the breathless, kindhearted Flora Finching, and I find myself almost helpless with laughter whenever Flora's senile and hostile charge, Mr F's Aunt, makes her perfectly doled-out appearances in these pages. (Arguably the funniest scene Dickens ever wrote is the scene with this "most excellent woman" and Arthur Clennam and the crust of bread). This is a great Dickens novel even for people who tend not to like Dickens (and yes, there are some of them, as hard as that may be for the rest of us to believe).
Rating:
Summary: "The Mind-Forged Manacles"
Review: Do we still have the time and patience to read a 900 page Dickens novel? Are we willing to put up with the long-winded paragraphs, the "cardboard characters", the convoluted mysteries of 19th century fiction? Rags-to-riches stories may not command as much attention today as they did then - until we read how gullible people are lured into shady investment schemes, how greed spreads like an epidemic, creating stock market bubbles followed by collapse and ruin; then we realize that not much has changed after all. Sudden wealth brings out the worst in people: pretentiousness, social climbing, dissipation. The Dorrit family, set free from Debtor's Prison by an unexpected inheritance, behave just as the newly rich behave today - all except Amy ("Little Dorrit") who is not cowed by poverty nor blinded by riches.
The novel is about all sorts of imprisonment: physical, mental, spiritual. It's almost like a morality play, with stock characters who might as well be wearing signs proclaiming GREED, ENVY, PRIDE, WRATH, etc. People trapped in loveless marriages, indifferent jobs, money-grubbing schemes or self-righteous posturing are victims of the "mind-forged manacles" evoked by Blake. The social criticism may be dated, but the commentary on human nature surely is not.
For those who lack the stamina to plough through the entire novel, there is an excellent 4-part video version with Alec Guiness as Mr.Dorrit and Derek Jacobi as Arthur Clennam. It takes some liberties with the text, but the acting is superb.
As an afterthought, you might enjoy reading Evelyn Waugh's "A Handful of Dust", where the theme of entrapment is pursued in unexpected ways, culminating in a reading of "Little Dorrit".
Rating:
Summary: Should Be Listed Among His Best
Review: I'm busy reading the Dickens catalogue, chronologically. Despite the length and depth of "Little Dorrit," I read it in much less time than any other Dickens work thus far. So much is so good here: vivid narrative description, 3-D characters, subtle moral lessons, twisty plot with solid resolutions. When I first got to know Amy, my first thought was that she was too good and pure to live all the way through the novel. Then, as I came to know her better, I vowed that if Dickens did kill her off, I'd read no more of him! Needless to say, I was pleased with the way things turned around, so that Amy ended up back in the prison -- but in such altered circumstances! Recommended for experienced Dickensians.
Rating: 
Summary: Too drawn out
Review: If Dickens had stopped this book when Amy's father had been released from prison, I would have considered this book phenomenal. The first half is filled with outstanding images, deep psychological insights into human nature, and very convincing characters.However, I feel in the 2nd half, Dickens tells you in 400 pages what he could have told you in 100 pages. To be sure, this book is certainly worth reading, but don't expect a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Sustained imaginative power
Review: Little Dorrit is probably not the first Dickens novel one should read; work up to it. But it's a great novel, reaching across the levels of society, and with Dickens's facility of invention reined in by moral seriousness. The melodramatic element is subdued here, and Dickens displays a perception of psychology that may be unexpected for those used to his more entertaining books. Some critics rate this his finest novel.
Rating:
Summary: Sustained imaginative power
Review: Little Dorrit is probably not the first Dickens novel one should read; work up to it. But it's a great novel, reaching across the levels of society, and with Dickens's facility of invention reined in by moral seriousness. The melodramatic element is subdued here, and Dickens displays a perception of psychology that may be unexpected for those used to his more entertaining books. Some critics rate this his finest novel.
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