Enter Little Nell

I'm reading Dickens from start to finish and Ailz is accompanying me to the extent of tackling selected volumes as audio books. I'll go into the room where she is and there'll be a guy pretending to be a Cheeryble brother- rather high-pitched and fluting- or Ralph Nickleby- dry and raspy.

All of Dickens is available on audio- often in many different versions. Big names are involved. For The old Curiosity Shop she has the choice- among other less familiar names- of Paul Scofield or Anton Lesser.

I've started TOCS. Say what you like about Little Nell, but in these early chapters- surrounded by the inanimate grotesques of her grandfather's shop and the animate grotesques of her human acquaintance- she makes a striking figure of menaced innocence- and one worries about her...