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My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time

3.46 of 5 stars 3.46 · rating details · 343 ratings · 70 reviews

A thrillingly imagined rollercoaster of a novel bursting with sex, time travel, and true love.

Charlotte Schleswig, the delightful narrator of Liz Jensen's latest novel, supports herself and the lumpen Fru Schleswig (who may or may not be her mother) as a prostitute in 1890s Copenhagen. While she is no small success at the trade, she leaps at a new job opportunity for herse...more

Hardcover, 288 pages

Published July 11th 2006 by Bloomsbury USA (first published 2006)

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Nov 11, 2007 Zab rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: otherworlds

This book is a cheerful, verbally inventive time-traveling romp - Moll Flanders with a side of Jules Verne. It has a more sentimental ending than Moll Flanders, but no one can complain about this - you're not exactly reading it for the gritty realism.

Those looking for a realistic treatment of prostitution, poverty, binge drinking, or period language, or those who can't deal with gratuitous ampersand use, should stay away. Those looking for the most flattering and amoral of unreliable narrators s...more

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Oct 31, 2012 Charles Dee Mitchell rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-sf

Charlotte Shleswig is a precocious young prostitute living in the Osterbro neighborhood of Copenhagen in 1890. She has been raised in a orphanage and has given herself an idiosyncratic eduction by reading every mouldering book she finds in the orphanage basement. Her reading has provided a useful fund of knowledge to accompany her considerable street smarts. It has also lent her a literary style that can be arch or wickedly funny. She tells her adventures with a voice that evokes Nicholas Nickle...more Charlotte Shleswig is a precocious young prostitute living in the Osterbro neighborhood of Copenhagen in 1890. She has been raised in a orphanage and has given herself an idiosyncratic eduction by reading every mouldering book she finds in the orphanage basement. Her reading has provided a useful fund of knowledge to accompany her considerable street smarts. It has also lent her a literary style that can be arch or wickedly funny. She tells her adventures with a voice that evokes Nicholas Nickleby coauthored by Moll Flanders with the occasional foray into Fanny Hill.

And she does have adventures. She solves the mystery buried in the basement of her employer, the hideous Fru Krak. She travels through time, winding up in 21st century London. She finds true love with a Scottish archeologist. She works out a scheme to protect the time traveling device by watching a single episode of Scooby Doo her fist day in a London high-rise apartment.

She is great fun, but I have to admit she began to wear on me about halfway through the novel. The prose can be laugh-out-loud funny, but relentless cleverness can only hold my attention so far. There is a large and lively cast of characters but I cared about them about as much as I cared about the characters on Lost, meaning that however entertaining I found them I was not at all concerned about what fate might befall them. A grisly death would be just as satisfying as seeing things work out well. And it is clear from pretty early on in Jensen's novel that what we have here is a fairy tale of the happy-ever-after variety.

I found this book listed in Damien Broderick's and Paul di Filippo's 101 Best Science Fiction Novels, 1985 - 2010. SF fans are not likely to take much a shine to it. I suppose the time travel aspect makes if science fiction, but it is pure fantasy. The workings of Prof. Krak's time machine have more in common with Peter Pan's flying instructions to Wendy than to any even half-hearted effort at considering the science involved.(less)

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Feb 25, 2012 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Meet Frøken Charlotte, a poor but proud harlot in nineteenth-century Copenhagen, a “street-girl at street level”, who has not only herself to take care of, but also sturdy Fru Schleswig, who is useless but hard to get rid off. A “chain reaction of eerie wonders & absurd mistakes” is set off when Charlotte and Fru Schleswig begin working as cleaning ladies for the sour-faced Fru Krak in her remote and creepy mansion. Curious as she is, rumours of man-eating machines in the basement and the gh...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Bronwyn Rykiert rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook, historical-romance, time-travel

The blurb on the back it says Charlotte,who is a prostitute in 19th century Copenhagen finds herself in twenty-first century London with the help of a time machine. Yes that was the gist of the story but the way it is told is nothing like I expected. Very descriptive - I actually leapt through chapters and I was going not finish the book but something compelled me to keep listening to the end.

Charlotte starts hearing stories about Fru Krack's husband disappearing and wants to go work at her hous...more

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Aug 06, 2012 Smcleish rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Originally published on my blog here&.

If the title did not warn the reader, the first sentence's appropriation of the famous opening to Rebecca would make it clear that My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time is not going to be entirely serious. It is a personal history, told by Charlotte, a prostitute from late nineteenth century Copenhagen. When times are hard, she manages to inveigle her way into a respectable house as a maid, only to be accidentally catapulted into twenty-first century Londo...more Originally published on my blog here&.

If the title did not warn the reader, the first sentence's appropriation of the famous opening to Rebecca would make it clear that My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time is not going to be entirely serious. It is a personal history, told by Charlotte, a prostitute from late nineteenth century Copenhagen. When times are hard, she manages to inveigle her way into a respectable house as a maid, only to be accidentally catapulted into twenty-first century London bye the HG Wells-style time machine hidden in the basement.

My Dirty Little Book is broad comedy, sometimes even cruel (Charlotte's treatment of the dim overweight woman who accompanies her is a case in point). But it is still very funny. In fact, I was reading it alongside a P.G. Wodehouse I hadn't read before (The Girl in Blue), and Liz Jensen held her own even in this company. Few indeed will be those readers who follow Charlotte's exhortation in a time of adversity to return the book in disgust to the shop or library from which it was obtained.

I have tagged this review as science fiction because of the time travel element, though one of the reviews quoted on the cover describes it as "less science fiction than fairy tale", which is in many ways true. I don't have a tag for fairy tale currently, but I actually think that science fiction is the right genre in which to place this book (subsidiary to humour, which is obviously its main point). My feeling is that P.G. Wodehouse and Terry Pratchett are readily filed under science fiction or fantasy, because the genre themes and ideas are important elements in the structure of their books, provide much of the humour, and are the subjects of parody. Not only that, but the detailed nature of the genre elements is frequently given in some detail and is important to the story: dragons in The Color of Magic (to pick one example) are not just fairy story beasts with no explanation, but projections of a human belief in dragons and a parody ofAnne McCaffrey's Pernese dragons. And I think that all these criteria hold for Liz Jensen's book as well. Time travel is essential to the plot and the humour; there are moments of genre parody, particularly of H.G. Wells; the time machine itself is analysed further (there is even some discussion of the famous grandfather paradox). In fact, the nature of the fuel which propels the time machine is the closest that My Dirty Little Book comes to having a serious point, consisting as it does of three liquids embodying the struggle of history (blood, sweat, and tears), mixed with that more comical essential lubricant, strong alcoholic spirits.

The plot of My Dirty Little Book is farcical and not particularly important, except as the means by which the humour is generated. This mainly takes the form of Charlotte's observations of the worlds of both time periods. She is a most lively storyteller, occasionally a little too keen to address the reader directly, perhaps, but certainly an individual and entertaining voice. The amoral narration and humorous twists and turns of Charlotte's exploits made me think of Harry Flashman, not a bad model for this sort of comic novel.(less)

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Jan 01, 2013 Hannah Wingfield rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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-...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: time-travel

Time travel. Perversion. The first is a topic of interest and the latter, well, puts everything in a new perspective. Charlotte is a harlot who talks to you like you're a confidante. I greatly enjoyed how she told me about her misadventures. (Hats off to Liz Jensen for giving her an original voice. Note: It does take a while to get used to how Charlotte speaks.) She is fun, witty (street-wise), definitely not your ordinary damsel-in-distress. I would give this book a full five stars if the plot...more

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May 22, 2011 Josie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

alksjdhf utterly hilarious!! I don't think I have anything more to add to the Daily Mail review on the front cover: "Unashamedly gleeful: a kind of topsy-turvy Jane Eyre with added time travel... Sit back, suspend your disbelief, and enjoy." I picked this book up because of the blurb ("...part-time prostitute Charlotte and her lumpen sidekick, Fru Schleswig, have taken on jobs as cleaning ladies of dubious talent to tide them over the harsh winter of 1897. [...] Rudely catapulted into twenty-fir...more

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Mar 31, 2010 Joy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy-magic

This is the first time I read a book from this author and I have to admit the cover and title lured me in. It was catchy and it made me pick up the book and read the summary, after having done so I was sold. Time travelling always appealed to me and whoever wrote the summary in the flap did a really good job. It suggested mystery, adventure, and fantasy.

I started to read the first few chapters and the initial pull didn't last that long. The writing was just OK, the author used the first person...more

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May 12, 2013 Coqueline rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had a hard time deciding whether the book deserved 4 or 5 stars. It definitely doesn't compare to some other 5-star book I've rated before, but I know I had such fun reading this book. So what the heck, let's give it 5 stars.

Even with the time travel elements, I wouldn't list the book as science fiction, as there is very little scientific element to the story, but at the same time, it did provide a fresh twist to the weary trope of time travel that I didn't have to throw the book away in frust...more

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Sep 29, 2012 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, 2000s

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 the...more 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.(less)

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Sep 17, 2008 Mo Tipton rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, can-t-seem-to-finish

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. **This review contains a crapton of spoilers!! Consider yourself forewarned.**

I really wanted to like this book, truly I did, but for some reason, I couldn't seem to finish it. The first part was very entertaining--the irreverent main character is a highly entertaining tour guide of 19th century Denmark and its horny inhabitants (she's a sex worker), and I was sucked into the mystery of a missing (murdered?) husband and a strange basement where people go in...but never come out, but then it was...more

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Feb 09, 2012 Jen McGovern rated it 3 of 5 stars

crossing both temporal and geologic boundaries, this book portrays itself as a journal kept by the narrator, charlotte, as her life changes from that of a poor prostitute in 19th century Denmark to a time-traveler bouncing from Denmark to 21st century London. slightly slow moving at first, but quite funny most of the time, although i did find myself sometimes getting frustrated with (what i felt) was an overuse of ampersands (&) in the author's attempt to portray handwriting/abbreviations in...more

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Apr 29, 2008 lynne naranek rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008

If you've read Liz Jensen's previous book - The Ninth Life of Louis Drax - or Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and could deal with the narration style, then by all means, add this to your to-read list! Written in the same rather chaotic manner, now with ampersands ( & ) strewn liberally across every page, this time-traveling love story starts off in Copenhagen, where Charlotte the harlot manages to get herself and her supposed mother a more legitimate job clea...more

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Mar 26, 2009 Steve rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Great! I loved it! I read this book after the Ninth Life of Louis Drax and was captivated. The central character, the heroine Charlotte, made me laugh and kept me intrigued in the story to the end. Maybe Liz Jensen just managed to hit on the right combination of love story, time travel, lascivious people, greed, quick-thinking and guile for my personal taste.

I'd rather see this go to the big screen than Louis Drax.

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Jul 10, 2010 Darshan Elena rated it 4 of 5 stars

I adored this book. In fact, I wish I had written it. My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time was a delightful blend of humor, history, and fantastic time travelogue. Charlotte was a charming character, perspicacious and full of sass, especially when chronicling her mother's faults. I loved the author's descriptions of turn-of-the-century Copenhagen so much so that I hope to visit its more modern self!

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Jul 21, 2009 Tara rated it 2 of 5 stars

I had a hard time reading this book. For the most part I felt I like had to push myself to read this and finish it. There was enough parts that were kind of funny and engaging that it made me think that the book was going to get better and that I should not give up on it. I think my biggest issue was that I did not find the narrator very engaging. I think for me that was the biggest difference between this book and Louis Drax. Louis Drax was engaging as a narrator and I wanted to read to find ou...more

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Jun 07, 2013 Tasula rated it 4 of 5 stars

This started as a young woman earning a living as a prostitute in Osterbro, Denmark, who takes a job as housekeeper (along with an older woman who MIGHT be her mother) for a supercilious "fine lady" and discovers a strange machine in the basement. What ensues is a dizzying trip across time for her and friends. It was a lot of fun, both hilarious and poignant.

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Jan 29, 2013 Lisa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013-reads

I am a bit biased because I love almost any book that involves time travel, and this one was no exception. The characters were a bit over the top at times, but that was part of the fun of the book. I enjoyed it, and it kept me turning pages, so I felt it deserved a five star rating.

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Jul 09, 2009 Siobhan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: hist-fict

I liked this. At first I wasn't sure, and all the ampersands made me want to claw my own eyes out. But the character is sweet and I especially liked the epilogue-portion of the end, which is a wise summation of what precedes; the meat is there that might otherwise be lost in the zany storytelling.

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Nov 17, 2011 julie rated it 4 of 5 stars

this isn't a super deep book, but i enjoyed it and had that feeling a few days afterwards of missing the characters, because they had become wacky friends. charlotte was brave, daring and amusing and quite progressive for being from the 19th century. i loved that the time machine was powered by human blood, sweat and tears. of course, it also helped that the book was set, at least partially, in copenhagen. :-)

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Jul 23, 2011 Kiran rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found this book a bit difficult with its bizarre language style, which some might find innovative and interesting, but I found it pretty off-putting and thought it just got in the way of what was actually a fairly good plot.

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Jan 23, 2010 Theresa rated it 2 of 5 stars

This was an ok book. I liked it at first but I guess towards the middle it sort of stalled out for me. I wouldn't say it was a wasted read, but it wasn't a book that every day I was dying to pick up & read either. The ending was a little bit of a let down as well.

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Jul 22, 2012 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Not sure I would recommend this book but I did enjoy reading it. I really like the author's voice. The characters and the plot were fun. A bit naughty, a bit sci-fi but mostly fairy tale with a twist.

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Dec 03, 2011 Isabel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

From the Club Rules: Members must especially beware of Danes from modern Denmark. Should one be encountered by chance, who turns inquisitive, suggest that you represent the Danish tax authorities.

Charlotte, a prostitute from 1897 Copenhagen, is short of funds after the death of one of her regulars and the jailing of another. A chance encounter in a baker's shop leads to her and her older companion Fru Schleswig, taking a job cleaning the mansion belonging to Fru Krak, but she isn't prepared for...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Alan added it

I don't have anything good to say about this book. Memoires of a fin de secle Copenhagen whore who time travels to London, falls in love and recreates the Time Machine. Not well written.

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Jul 16, 2009 Lindsey Case rated it 4 of 5 stars

Once I got used to the writing style I really enjoyed this book. I found it a little whimsical and very amusing. It was very funny at times and a good book to read if you’re not looking for something really serious or profound.

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Jul 05, 2011 Kris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Oohoo, time travel and Danish prostitutes. The love story part was much less fun than the rest of it, I have to say, but I really enjoyed it.

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Jun 22, 2009 Jeff is currently reading it

A prostitute in nineteenth century Copenhagen gets into a time machine to 21st century London. Very intriguing, still not sure where its going.

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Aug 10, 2011 Lyndsey rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Took quite a while to get into but was an amusing enough yarn, nowhere near as good as Jensen's War Crimes for the Home though.

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About Liz Jensen

Liz Jensen was born in Oxfordshire, the daughter of a Danish father and an Anglo-Moroccan mother. She spent two years as a journalist in the Far East before joining the BBC, first as a journalist, then as a TV and radio producer. She then moved to France where she worked as a sculptor began her first novel, Egg Dancing, which was published in 1995. Back in London she wrote Ark Baby (1998) which wa...more

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