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katykelly's review against another edition
5.0
Wonderful recreation of the classic narrator - in the 21st century! Twain would be proud.
Oh this was so good. I just melted into the narration, it was genres and themes I love - historical fiction, contemporary humor, time travel, a good dash of sexy fun.
In the storytelling style of Defoe or Cleland, and like their well known protagonists Moll and Fanny, Charlotte is a 1890s young woman who unapologetically sells her body to get by. Copenhagen in 1897 could be lucrative for someone smart, and Lottie has dreams, despite being almost starving and hampered by a leech-like mother figure she can't shake off.
Managing to finagle their way into a wealthy household as staff, Lottie and Fru Schleswig without planning to manage to transport themselves to 21st-century London. To a world of strange communication devices, unfathomable clothes and unknown foods. Though there are still men with the same needs surely, so maybe Lottie can manage to hook herself someone rich and secure herself a future?
A real attention-grabber, the book gives a 19th century worldview on modern-day London, and never loses that as Lottie experiences a new time period, the start of her own potential romance, time travel dilemmas and suspense. Throughout it all, she talks to us, her dear reader (flatterer). We don't know where she'll end up, but like Fanny Hill, we are rooting for the little minx. Lottie is thoroughly likeable, she has a way with words, quoting authors and references old and new, it's anachronistic but also telling, it's charming. The sex talk is never quite graphic but is present, I found this as bawdy as Tom Jones or Fanny Hill.
With a cast of memorable characters, I would love to see this as a mini-series - best of both worlds with the period costumes but modern sensibilities. Pretty please, BBC!
Loved it.
Oh this was so good. I just melted into the narration, it was genres and themes I love - historical fiction, contemporary humor, time travel, a good dash of sexy fun.
In the storytelling style of Defoe or Cleland, and like their well known protagonists Moll and Fanny, Charlotte is a 1890s young woman who unapologetically sells her body to get by. Copenhagen in 1897 could be lucrative for someone smart, and Lottie has dreams, despite being almost starving and hampered by a leech-like mother figure she can't shake off.
Managing to finagle their way into a wealthy household as staff, Lottie and Fru Schleswig without planning to manage to transport themselves to 21st-century London. To a world of strange communication devices, unfathomable clothes and unknown foods. Though there are still men with the same needs surely, so maybe Lottie can manage to hook herself someone rich and secure herself a future?
A real attention-grabber, the book gives a 19th century worldview on modern-day London, and never loses that as Lottie experiences a new time period, the start of her own potential romance, time travel dilemmas and suspense. Throughout it all, she talks to us, her dear reader (flatterer). We don't know where she'll end up, but like Fanny Hill, we are rooting for the little minx. Lottie is thoroughly likeable, she has a way with words, quoting authors and references old and new, it's anachronistic but also telling, it's charming. The sex talk is never quite graphic but is present, I found this as bawdy as Tom Jones or Fanny Hill.
With a cast of memorable characters, I would love to see this as a mini-series - best of both worlds with the period costumes but modern sensibilities. Pretty please, BBC!
Loved it.
sonyakyr's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
very entertaining, a light read, a less depressing twist on time travel stories. happy ending for all.
sandin954's review against another edition
3.0
An entertaining blend of time travel and romance. Loved the main character's voice which pulled me through the rather off the wall plot. Listened to the audio which was read by Rachel Bavidge who did a great job with the first person narration.
wtfmofoable's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
mariesreads's review against another edition
4.0
A delightful bawdy romp with a fantastic narrative voice and allusions nearing Pynchon levels. It's zany and fun and thoroughly enjoyable, and I absolutely loved how funny and clever it is.
oldenglishrose's review against another edition
4.0
Charlotte, the narrator, is a young woman living in nineteenth century Copenhagen, where she supports herself and Fru Schelswig, the fat, base old woman whom everyone assumes is her mother, by working as a prostitute. When the cold winter drives her to seek further employment, she and Fru Schelswig find themselves working for the disagreeable Fru Krak, cleaning her house from top to bottom with the exception of certain forbidden rooms in the basement. Convinced there must be something hidden there worth stealing, Charlotte cannot help investigating and discovers a mysterious machine left there by Fru Krak’s vanished husband which will change the course of her life forever as it catapults her, all unknowing, into twenty-first century London.
This is the sort of book for which the term ‘romp’ was invented. It is light-hearted, witty, filled with adventure and generally great fun to read. If nothing hugely surprising happens, the plot is sufficiently exciting and the narration more than engaging enough in spite of that to draw the reader in and keep hold of their attention throughout.
Charlotte’s voice is one of the key features which makes the book so enjoyable. She is self-assured and inclined towards melodrama and exaggeration, but her easy humour transforms this from a narrative style that could have been alienating and tiresome into one that is self aware and not afraid to be self mocking. My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time is rather silly and the book knows it and takes great pleasure in being so. Charlotte’s habit of referring to the reader directly as ‘dearest‘ and complimenting them frequently is just one example of the book’s playfulness which makes it so much fun.
Although people travelling backwards in time to visit periods in history is a subject often addressed in fiction, the reverse situation depicted in this book is not, and Liz Jensen does a wonderful job of imagining the twenty-first century as seen through the eyes of someone from the past: "But the dream did not end, & could not be escaped from so easily, & indeed it then most swiftly turned nightmarish, for waiting at the black wrought-iron park entrance…stood a shiny black carriage of iron, horseless, on four wheels, that growled like a foul-tempered hippopotamus. Professor Krak bade us enter it through a door in its side: ‘Our means of transport, ladies,’ he said, & then, in a foreign tongue which I presumed to be English, commenced a rushed conversation with the driver of the vehicle, who was – Lord! I could scarcely believe my eyes! – as black as a coal-scuttle, just like in the illustrations of man-eating cannibals I had seen in the cellar at the orphanage! But before I could scream in terror & make my escape, the machine roared to life with a smooth lurch & we sped into the pellucid gloaming which in that place seemed to pass for night."
All this is related in a mixture of archaicisms and modern slang which seems peculiarly appropriate to a time traveller. Simple devices such as the use of ampersand instead of ‘and’ provide continuous reminders that Charlotte is from the past. Fru Shleswig is also given an effective, distinctive manner of speaking, using a sort of Middle English spelling which implies her ignorance and peasant-like bluntness.
The book isn’t without its faults. For an adventurous book about time travel, it takes a surprisingly long time in exposition building up to this actually taking place and although it is interesting from the beginning because of the narrator the story could perhaps have benefited from starting a bit sooner. The pacing of the narrative remains slightly uneven throughout the book, but this is never enough of a problem to affect the enjoyment of reading such a thoroughly entertaining book.
This is the sort of book for which the term ‘romp’ was invented. It is light-hearted, witty, filled with adventure and generally great fun to read. If nothing hugely surprising happens, the plot is sufficiently exciting and the narration more than engaging enough in spite of that to draw the reader in and keep hold of their attention throughout.
Charlotte’s voice is one of the key features which makes the book so enjoyable. She is self-assured and inclined towards melodrama and exaggeration, but her easy humour transforms this from a narrative style that could have been alienating and tiresome into one that is self aware and not afraid to be self mocking. My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time is rather silly and the book knows it and takes great pleasure in being so. Charlotte’s habit of referring to the reader directly as ‘dearest‘ and complimenting them frequently is just one example of the book’s playfulness which makes it so much fun.
Although people travelling backwards in time to visit periods in history is a subject often addressed in fiction, the reverse situation depicted in this book is not, and Liz Jensen does a wonderful job of imagining the twenty-first century as seen through the eyes of someone from the past: "But the dream did not end, & could not be escaped from so easily, & indeed it then most swiftly turned nightmarish, for waiting at the black wrought-iron park entrance…stood a shiny black carriage of iron, horseless, on four wheels, that growled like a foul-tempered hippopotamus. Professor Krak bade us enter it through a door in its side: ‘Our means of transport, ladies,’ he said, & then, in a foreign tongue which I presumed to be English, commenced a rushed conversation with the driver of the vehicle, who was – Lord! I could scarcely believe my eyes! – as black as a coal-scuttle, just like in the illustrations of man-eating cannibals I had seen in the cellar at the orphanage! But before I could scream in terror & make my escape, the machine roared to life with a smooth lurch & we sped into the pellucid gloaming which in that place seemed to pass for night."
All this is related in a mixture of archaicisms and modern slang which seems peculiarly appropriate to a time traveller. Simple devices such as the use of ampersand instead of ‘and’ provide continuous reminders that Charlotte is from the past. Fru Shleswig is also given an effective, distinctive manner of speaking, using a sort of Middle English spelling which implies her ignorance and peasant-like bluntness.
The book isn’t without its faults. For an adventurous book about time travel, it takes a surprisingly long time in exposition building up to this actually taking place and although it is interesting from the beginning because of the narrator the story could perhaps have benefited from starting a bit sooner. The pacing of the narrative remains slightly uneven throughout the book, but this is never enough of a problem to affect the enjoyment of reading such a thoroughly entertaining book.
tasharobinson's review against another edition
4.0
Well this was a strange and unexpected find, a story that starts out with a sex worker in 1890s Denmark, telling her life story in a very peculiar narrative voice full of ampersands and exclamations, and then goes radically elsewhere. It took me a while to get into the swing of that voice, but once I did, and got used to the protagonist's discursive way of storytelling, this started to remind me a lot of Sarah Waters' Fingersmith and The Paying Guests, both in its level of period detail and in its skill at characterization. And then it goes off in some wild directions that fit perfectly with all the foreshadowing, but still just couldn't be predicted. Pretty strange, compulsively readable, and pretty delightful.
andintothetrees's review against another edition
3.0
Since reading The Rapture earlier this year I’ve been intrigued by Liz Jensen’s work. She melds genres, writes with complexity but without pretension, bringing an original voice to contemporary British fiction. My Dirty Little Book Of Stolen Time has a typically zany plot – fin de siècle Danish prostitute Charlotte stumbles across – and subsequently into – a time machine during an on-the-side cleaning job and finds herself in twenty-first century London. She teams up with other disorientated-in-time-and-place ex-pats and falls in love with a Scottish archaeologist single dad, facing various complications in matters romantic and metaphysical. So far, so good, no?
... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/my-dirty-little-book-of-stolen-time-by-liz-jensen/]
... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/my-dirty-little-book-of-stolen-time-by-liz-jensen/]
readacorn's review against another edition
4.0
Kurzbeschreibung
Kopenhagen 1898: Charlotte, ein hübsches, leichtlebiges Mädchen, lebt zusammen mit Frau Schleswig, die behauptet, ihre Mutter zu sein. Sie verdingen sich bei Frau Krak, einer reichen Witwe, deren großes Haus sie sauber & in Stand halten sollen. Dabei entdeckt Charlotte einen mysteriöse Raum im Keller, wo sie auf den angeblich verstorbenen Professor Krak trifft, der eine Zeitmaschine gebaut hat. Mit seiner Hilfe landet Charlotte plötzlich im London des 21. Jahrhunderts. Aberwitzige Abenteuer und mehrmalige Zeitreisen müssen bestanden werden, bis Charlotte endlich in die Arme ihres schottischen Geliebten Fergus sinken kann.
Kurzmeinung / Leseerlebnis
In dem gesamten Buch kommt das Wort "und" nicht vor. Es ist stets durch das kaufmännische "&" ersetzt. Das irritiert anfangs beim Lesen. Mit der Zeit gewöhnt man sich aber daran. Gelegentlich wird der Leser/die Leserin direkt angesprochen. Das ist nicht jedermanns Sache. Ich mag es & es kam auch nicht zu oft vor. Außerdem ist die Erzählerin sehr freundlich & schmeichelhaft; Eigenschaften, die ihr als Dirne zugute kamen. Ich mochte sie sehr.
Insgesamt habe ich dieses Buch trotz oder vielleicht wegen seiner Einfachheit sehr gerne gelesen. Eine leichte & unterhaltsame Lektüre, bei der es fast schade ist, dass es keine Fortsetzung gibt.
Kopenhagen 1898: Charlotte, ein hübsches, leichtlebiges Mädchen, lebt zusammen mit Frau Schleswig, die behauptet, ihre Mutter zu sein. Sie verdingen sich bei Frau Krak, einer reichen Witwe, deren großes Haus sie sauber & in Stand halten sollen. Dabei entdeckt Charlotte einen mysteriöse Raum im Keller, wo sie auf den angeblich verstorbenen Professor Krak trifft, der eine Zeitmaschine gebaut hat. Mit seiner Hilfe landet Charlotte plötzlich im London des 21. Jahrhunderts. Aberwitzige Abenteuer und mehrmalige Zeitreisen müssen bestanden werden, bis Charlotte endlich in die Arme ihres schottischen Geliebten Fergus sinken kann.
Kurzmeinung / Leseerlebnis
In dem gesamten Buch kommt das Wort "und" nicht vor. Es ist stets durch das kaufmännische "&" ersetzt. Das irritiert anfangs beim Lesen. Mit der Zeit gewöhnt man sich aber daran. Gelegentlich wird der Leser/die Leserin direkt angesprochen. Das ist nicht jedermanns Sache. Ich mag es & es kam auch nicht zu oft vor. Außerdem ist die Erzählerin sehr freundlich & schmeichelhaft; Eigenschaften, die ihr als Dirne zugute kamen. Ich mochte sie sehr.
Insgesamt habe ich dieses Buch trotz oder vielleicht wegen seiner Einfachheit sehr gerne gelesen. Eine leichte & unterhaltsame Lektüre, bei der es fast schade ist, dass es keine Fortsetzung gibt.
bbabyok's review against another edition
3.0
It was a fun read, nothing earth shattering but enjoyable.