“And Lizzie, finding herself to be, as she told herself, unstrung, fell also into novel-reading.”

-Anthony Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds

I find there is no better explanation for my own predicament than this of Trollope’s capricious heroine. Perhaps the appropriate contemporary update would be to say that, “M, finding herself to be, as she told herself, in a fit of the Februaries, fell also into Netflix-watching,” but I so quickly gorged myself on terrible television in the first month of the year that an accusation of novel-reading is far more accurate.

Unstrung, sleeping poorly and too much and too late and besieged by headaches and listlessness, I have at least recently made it through a prodigious score of pages of Victorian literature (though not of the highest kind, it must be said — it is one thing to gobble up Dickens’ fairy tales, and quite another to seek enlightenment through Eliot). It began in a picturesque and pure way over Christmas break — I found an old copy of Vanity Fair at a used book shop in rural Michigan. A mid-century hardback with a decorated spine and faded gilding, it chastised me for never yet enjoying Thackeray. And, as a volume without academic historical footnotes, it beckoned me to open it in a holiday spirit, to continue blithely ignorant of specific political context and literary reference. Needless to say, I did.

But one is apt to feel a strange sense of emptiness upon finishing a book, especially when one has devoured it quickly, and especially when the book in question is extraordinary. It was at this point that I resorted to the above mentioned contemporary media diet–with the sun barely shining and the world blanketed in the frozen hellscape of polar vortices, why not watch episode after episode of Suits? After all, Megan Markle is now an American princess, and that provides enough interest quite by itself!

Though in the end, despite a royal presence and guest appearances by Bunk from The Wire, the show became tiring. And so, unstrung, she fell into Dickens.

I began with Our Mutual Friend, as it was available at the library, and after dutifully slogging through the first 200 pages found myself very much in love. For the longest time it seemed to be the very darkest thing Dickens had ever written — imagine a book with not one character of Uriah Heep-level villianery, but four! Luckily in the end all was well, and it became clear that the novel’s concern with the corrupting power of wealth applies to all but those who truly deserve (and conveniently inherit!) it, namely very attractive young members of the upper middle class (oh Dickens, you dastardly conservative!).

I moved then to A Tale of Two Cities, which I did not like as much at all. Still charming, from page to page of course, but anything under 800 pages simply does not allow the man the proper scope for his imagination–shocking that he should even attempt such a work. Satisfied but briefly with my accomplishment of finishing another book (that’s the thing with accomplishments, they seem so jolly from afar but turn to ashes almost immediately), I passed over Hard Times (I mean really, why can’t my library keep a copy of Little Dorrit handy), and am now engaged on my first run at the awfully prolific Trollope. If nothing else, it certainly cannot be said that the man was succinct.

For now it will do, this charming confection, all gossip and glitter and Real Housewives of the Palliser Novels. Though it, too, will be done in time, and I will be all the same unstrung.

Sleepless and up past her bedtime,

M