UPDATE: On my second reading of Bleak House, I found myself just as caught up in the story, just as involved with the characters, and just as amazed at Dickens’ ability to weave a world that one can only be sorrowful to leave behind in the end. I closed the book the second time with tears standing in my eyes and with a strong conviction that if you could only have The Bible, Shakespeare and Dickens in your library, you would have the whole of humanity at your fingertips.

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It always feels a bit presumptive when I am trying to review the masters of the novel, a Dickens, Hardy, or Eliot. What can someone like myself contribute, that might matter, to the appreciation of a masterpiece like Bleak House. And yet, I want to effuse about it, I want to praise it, I want to say how completely effective it is and how strangely relevant to our society if you merely put the characters in cars instead of horse-drawn conveyances. I want to tell everyone that within its pages you will find the human condition has changed less than the progress we have made might indicate. At their hearts people are in want of love and understanding, food and warmth, that they are greedy or kind or confused or evil in the same way regardless of the era of their birth.

One of the major characters, Esther, might be painted a bit too perfect and faultless, too sweet and grateful and considerate; but I find myself quite happy with her and wanting to believe that there might exist people who at least strive to be this good. John Jarndyce is one of the finest characters in fiction--a man who does good wherever he can and expects nothing in return, including thanks. And what can one say of Harold Skimpole? He is despicable because he never takes any responsibility for his actions and lives the life of a leech by cloaking himself in the guise of a child. He is a universally harmful person, at whom one chuckles in the beginning, but loathes by the end. A host of fascinating characters (Lady Dedlock, George the Trooper, and Inspector Bucket all shine) people this novel and keep the suspense and interest alive throughout. Because this is Dickens, you can be sure there are villains aplenty, innocents in danger of being squashed by society, and poverty of a level that is appalling. If there is anything Dickens understands it is class division and the inability of the ordinary man to lift himself out of the gutter once life has flung him there.

Then there is the condemnation of the legal system and the sad injustice that is built into its operations. The suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce that is at the heart of the novel exposes in how little measure the legal system exists for the good or benefit of those who find themselves in its grasp. How sad, we are told, to wrap your life up in any expectation of justice or relief from the courts, what a waste of time for anyone but the lawyers who alone seem to profit from the venture.

Dickens knows his craft and provides just the right mix of sentiment, humor and mystery. In turn, I laughed aloud, cried a bit and neglected chores to get to the end of a chapter and the possible nugget of information that might help to solve one of the myriad mysteries presented. He plays with words and images and I could not help noting that the least “bleak” house of all was John Jarndyce’s home that officially carried the name.

Every time I read a true classic, I have to stop and kick myself for having been so long getting around to it. There is a reason these stories have lasted through centuries. There is a reason they do not fade into oblivion along with so many of their fellows. They spoke to the audience they were written for, and, they speak just as eloquently to the audience that finds them today. If I live long enough, I hope to be able to say I have read every Dickens novel. At least now I can say I have read Bleak House, and it was an experience worth having.

Finally finished it and it only took me four months [pats self on back, does a little victory dance and then weeps,] but I'm so glad I read it. This is a book--like The Brothers Karamozov--that makes the subsequent books the author wrote seem superfluous. It contains multitudes. All of humanity is represented here (well, all of Victorian English humanity at any rate.) The truest--and shortest--sentence of the book is the first one: "London."

The organizing metaphor of the book is the Chancery Court where people come to await judgments that never seem to come, or when they do come, come too late to be of any use. Kurt Vonnegut summarizes the point of the book when he said (in a completely different context, not talking about this book,) "A purpose of human life is to love whomever is around to be loved." The paragon of this idea is John Jarndyce who has a big stake in the outcome of a court case, but completely ignores it, instead spending his time coming to the aid of whomever needs his aid. He is the goodliest, most charitable character in any book I've ever read. His antipode is Mrs. Jellyby, who spends all her time on a hopeless scheme to aid Humanity at the expense of those who really need her--her poor forlorn family. Dickens calls this Telescopic Philanthropy (a great phrase.)

To me, the most interesting character is Mr. Bucket, detective. When it comes to his job, he posses an almost god-like perspicacity, and does it with amazing compassion, but even he can't save everyone. That's what makes Dickens a great artist. He's cynical about "officialdom," tender towards the frailty of humans, but ultimately realistic about mankind's chances for perfect happiness. He further illustrates this in his depiction of Sir Leicester. Leicester's an upper-class twit, but one capable of great suffering. His fate broke my heart.

All that being said, what I didn't like about the book was the "sweetness and light" of some of the Esther episodes. Early on it made me want to put the book down (or throw it at a puppy,) but eventually I got swept along by the amazingly complex narrative.
I realize this review is long and rambling (and getting longer and more rambling by this little postscript) and I could go on and on about fifty different scenes in this book that elated, saddened or otherwise moved me, so I'll just leave it at this: This book is sad, funny, tender, thrilling, heart-breaking, and Mr. Smallweed is kind of a dick.

" بلیک هاوس"یا"خانه ی قانون زده"اثر"چارلز دیکنز"،برجسته ترین رمان نویس انگلیسی عصر ویکتوریا ؛ کتابی است که به اوضاع بحران قانون ، طبقه ی فقیر انگلستان و وضعیت نا به سامان مسائل اجتماعی می پردازد. داستان دارای دو زاویه ی دید است و همین امر لذت دنبال کردن سیر داستان را دو چندان می کند :یکی اول شخص،از زبان دختری عاقل و قدرشناس به نام" استر سامرسن" ،دختری که به توسط زنی که رفتار خشن و مغرضانه با او دارد بزرگ شده است .پس از مرگ مادر خوانده آقای "جان جارندیس" سرپرستی او را تقبل می کند و در ادامه ی این ماجرا سیر اصلی داستان جان می گیرد.و" استر" به هویتی که سال ها در رنج بی خبری از آن به سر می برد ،پی می برد."دیکنز" به تمام شخصیت ها بها می دهد و آن ها را طوری بسط می دهد که هر یک قابل تعمیم به اقشار مختلف جامعه است.

I won't be going on and on with this review (though it did, which I was glad for) as I sometimes will tend to, but I will say this: in a former life I had an interest in the "Industrial Novels" of the major Victorians for reasons that had more to do with Raymond Williams's seminal (it more or less invented cultural studies) book Culture and Society 1780-1950. I was really interested in how these writers imagined (or failed to imagine) solutions to the "Condition of England" question regarding the growing inequality between the "Two Nations" of the rich and the poor—something which, following Carlyle's coining of the phrase in 1839 came to prominence in public debate for several decades, a debate which Dickens's Hard Times brilliantly contributed to. All this just to say that I was reading the novels for different reasons than now, and I hadn't returned to 19C literature until recently, with Eliot's Middlemarch, which I was reading to "mind the gaps", having failed to finish it for class when a student!

What I wasn't prepared for was for how that book would affect me emotionally. Now, you are either a sentimental sort or you're not, I expect, and consequently you are bound to approve of unabashed rivers of sentiment in Victorian novels or wisely steer well clear of it. You know yourself.

Well, I did, or thought I did anyhow, and thought I would come to these two novels with a certain sense of cerebral detachment, but I was wrong. Middlemarch opened the door, and I fell into Bleak House and made a blubbering fool of myself on more than one occasion. Mostly only my dogs were there to notice, and they weren't too impressed, by the looks of it....

I know that this kind of thing was what 19C readers demanded, and so Dickens et al gave it to them, sentiment. But to me, here with this one especially, it never felt forced, and I was loathe to leave these characters and their at times cozy but also harrowing world when it ended. The social/cultural aspects weren't as important to me as in when I read and re-read Hard Times, but no matter. It was the characters that I loved, ye olde fool that I am. That, and Dickens's unflappable ability to be Julie The Cruise Director for 1000+ pages.

I will close with some of heroine Esther Summerson's final thoughts:

The few words that I have to add to what I have written, are soon penned; then I, and the unknown friend to whom I write, will part for ever. Not without much dear remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope, on his or hers.

More than just some, Dame Durden, much more. It is a melancholy parting!

It’s hard to think how to put together a review of this, after spending the last three months reading it with the marvelous Dickensians group (a big thank you to Dickens Duchess Jean). I’ve been engrossed in these characters for so long that it feels like trying to write a review of my family!

“Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite ... Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families ... and you have no idea ... what games goes on!”

This book is a whole world, in that wonderful way big books are. But where most of the lengthy sagas I’ve read spread out long over time, this one spreads wide over a vast array of people. From powerful aristocrats in their massive estates to hungry urchins making their way on the streets, Dickens populates his world with unique individuals in that special way only he can.

The plot revolves around a legal suit, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and its impact on the many who stand to gain from the wills in dispute. The case has been going on for decades, and the paper generated by the interminable arguments is a constant suffocating presence in the narrative. To say Dickens was not a fan of the Court of Chancery’s efficiency is an understatement.

“We are a great country, Mr. Jarndyce, we are a very great country. This is a great system, Mr. Jarndyce, and would you wish a great country to have a little system? Now, really, really!”

The story is told by alternating between a third person and first person narrative. The first person is through the eyes of the heroine, Esther Summerson, whose parentage is one of the many--no I have to say copious--mysteries of the novel. We know Esther is selfless, humble, and cares deeply for all the people her narrative describes to us, including her benefactor Mr. John Jarndyce (who wisely steers clear of the ups and downs of the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case) and his cousins Richard and Ada. The third person sections fill out the story with the other main characters, including Lady Dedlock and her husband Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, along with the various lawyers involved in the case.

But some of the best characters could be seen as a second tier, the ones who come and go but appear so well fleshed out with their quirks and mannerisms, that when they reappear later in the story, we know them immediately. Some favorites were law stationer Mr. Snagsby, who hides his innate kindness behind a nervous cough; the wise Mrs. Bagnet, whose husband always asks her to give others his opinion; Inspector Bucket, first detective in English fiction, whose knowing finger points the way to resolutions; Miss Flite, who keeps a caged bird for every chancery suitor … I could go on and on.

Bleak House, with its groundbreaking narrative style, complex plot, and carefully revealed mysteries is a miraculous achievement. My admiration for the author, already quite high, grew leaps and bounds with this one. It is a fantastic world in which to spend a few months of reading, and this family of Dickens characters is likely to remain with me forever.

Un solo aggettivo per definire questo voluminoso romanzo: magnifico. Con tutti i suoi limiti, costituiti da un numero enorme di pagine, più di 800, di cui, se andiamo ad approfondire, forse meno della metà sarebbe bastata per renderlo un grande libro; mai mi sono annoiata, però, durante la lettura, solo qualche pagina più lenta che si legge con una certa impazienza, ma sempre con “quel piccolo brivido che si sente dietro le scapole” che Nabokov definisce “la forma più alta di emozione che l’umanità abbia raggiunto sviluppando la pura arte e la pura scienza”. Tra pagine memorabili per le immagini liriche, per l’accuratezza con cui è descritta la miriade di ambienti e di personaggi, ognuno tratteggiato con efficacissime parole, la storia si svolge tutta intorno ad una causa legale che si tiene dinnanzi alla Corte del Lord Cancelliere di Londra, la causa Jarndyce contro Jarndyce, che si trascina da anni senza soluzione nei nebbiosi meandri della Corte di Chancery Lane. Il cuore del romanzo è la feroce critica al sistema legale inglese, al mondo degli avvocati e legulei che, come antichi mostri che popolano i peggiori incubi, ingurgitano i clienti, siano essi nobili signori che poveri disgraziati rimasti privi di tutto a causa della legge, portandoli verso la follia e la morte. Intorno alla nebbiosa causa Jarndyce contro Jarndyce ruotano tantissimi personaggi, nel bene e nel male, ma sempre splendidi, come bambini orfani (tema caro a Dickens) calpestati nei fondamentali diritti dell’infanzia, criminali usurai di aspetto e toni demoniaci, signore aristocratiche che nascondono segreti del loro passato che verranno man mano svelati, nobili signori inglesi tutti dedicati ad onorare il loro lignaggio, cameriere malvage e donne sacrificate dalla povertà estrema nei loro diritti di madri, c’è anche un investigatore, mister Bucket, con il quale Dickens inserisce una vena di giallo in una trama densissima di temi ; insomma, tantissimi personaggi, sui quali spicca la voce narrante, Esther Summerson, che si alterna nel racconto con il narratore Dickens, finchè nel finale i due si sovrappongono in una unica narrazione, quella di Esther, orfana sottoposta alla tutela del generosissimo mister Jarndyce, dolce, umile e candida fanciulla, unica beneficiata dalla causa Jarndyce contro Jarndyce che solo morte e dolore provoca . Una menzione speciale per l’avvocato Tulkinghorn, prototipo dell’avvocato freddo, calcolatore, privo di sentimenti, odioso e odiato ovunque e da chiunque -anche dalla sottoscritta, appartenente alla sua categoria, per cui la lettura è stata anche un confronto con la figura dell’avvocato di oggi, mica tanto migliore, purtroppo, nell’opinione popolare-.

"Crust upon crust of mud..." and "Fog everywhere"

Though made a bit uneven by Dickens' use of two narrators, I think this is his best novel (with David Copperfield his best book). Esther Summerson, a sweet and modest orphan, tells her tale in the first person present, as Dickens used for David in Copperfield and Pip in Great Expectations; and, the other narrator is an omniscient, largely dispassionate third person.

The novel has mystery, romance, comic elements, an intriguing cast of characters and superb social reformist themes of care for homeless children and the dilatory English chancery justice system via the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce (involving a decedent who wrote a number of conflicting wills). I thought it so good, I read it again.

To this day, most states in America's legal system, patterned on English jurisprudence, have two judicial systems running concurrently: one, the legal courts, or courts of law, which try traditional civil and criminal cases with juries (and by bench, when appropriate); second, the courts of chancery, also called equity courts and probate courts, which traditionally decide issues relating to real property, wills, trusts and estates, and involuntary commitments for danger to self and others.

Dickens had touched on the legal side in The Pickwick Papers, lambasting its inherent greed and specious civil lawsuits. Here, he absolutely excoriates the chancery system which could keep a dispute over a will entangled for decades, literally, in which dispute the lawyers, the likes of Tulkinghorn (a most evil bastard) and Mr. Vholes (worried more about his reputation than the interests of his clients), are enriched, to the point that the property at issue is completely eaten up by legal fees. Bleak House led to a reform of the chancery judiciary in the 1870s.

The beginning is one of the most memorable in all literature in metaphorically describing the chancery court system in terms of mud and fog. I don't include quotes nearly this length in my reviews, but this one is worthy of a sole exception:

n  LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongy fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.”n

Bleak House is a great story with a great storyline but it does drag on A LOT. It does get quite boring throughout the book. I love how Dickens created all the characters with such expertise. I do love the script for the play Bleak House (adapted by Anita Douglas) a lot better though. :)

Here I am, after months I managed to finish this immense masterpiece, I say it immediately,it was very hard.... not for its length but for the complexity of the contents. I didn’t care to read the story lightly, just to understand the plot of this intricate narration... but within the limits of the possible and the time (little) available, I wanted to guess the thousand motivations that prompted Dickens to make talk and move his characters in this or other way.
The plot of the book revolves around a court case, the Jarndyce against Jarndyce, a very complicated situation of a thousand under stories and judicial fragmentations that will see contrasted at the end 3 characters ;John Jarndyce, owner of a Bleak house, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare, two cousins under guardianship and direct beneficiaries of the Jarndyce inheritance...

you wil say, all right here? No, because Dickens, great expert in creating meticulously and from the distant linked stories between them, opens the novel with the presentation of Esther... a little strange girl, who will also lives at Bleak House with the two cousins.
From here starts a cascade of events, stories and a thousand narrative fragments where many characters will be presented: Lady Honoria Dedlock, neighbor of Bleak House, whose story is kind of crazy (SPOILER) Eventually it will be discovered that she is the mother of Esther, born from an extra-marital relationship and given from birth to live under guardianship with a nurse and a housekeeper, far from her origin's family....

Sir Laicester’s attorney, (this last one Sir is Honoria' s husband), who will be deceived or deceived to discover stories both at the husband's request and Honoria's, the mysteries related to the Will and various affidavit that pop up to disrupt the situations, but especially the plot!!
You will be struck by mysteries, murders but above all, by very sad conditions that will affect our characters...
The disease of Esther, struck by smallpox, which leaves her disfigured.... but redeemed by the tenderness of little Charley, a little girl who had saved from poverty and life on the street and put into service as a little lady-in-waiting and room helper.... But above all, Esther will find peace in her heart when Honoria reveals that she is her mother.
You find yourselves gazing at the madness that will strike Richard in order to obtain all the inheritance, which then at the end of the book will occur, but leaving the two cousins holding only air in their hands, since all the money were eaten by the expenses for the cause....
What can I say about all this magnificence read? That is very complex, that my time reduced to playing against the subtle ties between the characters, which are many, so I have sometimes found myself confused and deceived in believing and confusing between them...
The ruthless attack that Dickens makes against the English judicial system is without reticence, judges and lawyers described almost always as "half-men" good only to swell pockets of money to proceed and postpone sentences just to reread or insert codicils or irrelevant documents in the judicial process.

What conspired most was Dickens' ability to tell us of this humanity bent by the pains of life, each characters move for their purposes and interests but always having in their heart a present and fundamental morality for the events that will occur in the plot; it is not first that most of them have a soul now corrupted and bent by the vices of life... but their goals are always carried forward by a clear motivation, that will also move the events of this beautiful history. The psychology of these people is well described, clear and insightful of their being, this for me is the genius of Dickens, who in half a sentence tells you and defines you everything there is to know about a character and nothing else!! The end of the story is a joy of redemption and grace.....

Richard and John will acknowledge their ignoble behaviors and ask each other for mercy, Esther will have the chance to dissolve an engagement and marry Woodcourt, her true beloved not the protected and chosen by Jarndyce.
Lady Dedlock after discovering her daughter, will ask forgiveness for all the evil committed and truths kept from her husband, Sir Leicester.
What magnificence, what beauty!!!




Eccomi, dopo mesi sono riuscita a finire questo immenso capolavoro, lo dico subito, ho faticato molto.... non per la sua lunghezza ma per la complessità dei contenuti. Non mi interessava leggere la storia in modo leggero, giusto per capire la trama d questa intricatissima storia....ma nel limite del possibile e del tempo (poco) a disposizione, volevo intuire le mille motivazioni che hanno spinto Dickens a far parlare e a muovere i suoi personaggi in questo o in altro modo.
La trama del libro gira tutto intorno ad una causa giudiziaria, la Jarndyce contro Jarndyce, una situazione complicatissima di mille sotto storie e frammentazioni giudiziarie che vedrà contrapposti alla fin fine 3 personaggi ;John Jarndyce, propietario di Casa desolata, e Richard Carstone e Ada Clare, due cugini sotto tutela e beneficiari in linea diretta dell' eredità Jarndyce...
voi direte, bene tutto qui? E no, perchè Dickens, grandissimo sapiente nel creare minuziosamente e dalla lontana storie concatenate tra di loro, apre il romanzo con la presentazione di Esther... una giovinetta un pò strana, che andrà a vivere anche lei a casa desolata insieme ai due cugini.
Da qui parte una cascata di eventi, storie e mille frammentazioni narrative dove pian piano verranno presentati tantissimi personaggi: Honoria Dedlock, vicina di tenuta di Bleak House, la cui storia è pazzesca (SPOILER) alla fine si scoprirà che è la madre di Esther, nata da una relazione extra coniugale e data sin dalla nascita a vivere sotto tutela con una balia e una governante, lontana dalla sua famiglia di origine...
L'avvocato di Sir Laicester, quest'ultimo è marito di Honoria, che si lascerà trarre in inganno o sotto raggiro per scoprire storie sia sotto richiesta del marito che di Honoria, ovvero i misteri legati al testamento e vari affidavit che spuntano fuori sparigliando le carte, ma soprattutto la trama!!
Verrete colpiti dai misterie omicidi ma soprattutto da condizioni tristissime che colpiranno i nostri personaggi...
La malattia di Esther, colpita da vaiolo, che la lascia sfigurata..... ma redenta dalla tenerezza della piccola Charley, una bimba che aveva salvata dalla povertà e vita d strada e messa sotto servizio come piccola dama di compagnia e aiutante di camera....ma soprattutto Esther troverà pace nel cuore quando Honoria svelerà di essere sua mamma.
Vi ritrovete a sgranare gli occhi nel leggere la pazzia che colpirà Richard per riuscire ad ottenere tutta la eredità, cosa che poi alla fine del libro si verificherà, ma lasciando i due fratelli con in mano unicamente aria, visto che tutti i soldi sono stati mangiati dalla spese per la causa....
Cosa posso dire di tutta questa magnificenza letta? Che è complessissima, che il mio tempo risicato a giocato a sfavore nel capire bene i sottili legami tra i vari personaggi, che sono tantissimi, quindi mi sono a volte ritrovata confusa e tratta in inganno nel credere e confonderli tra di loro...
L'attacco spietato che Dickens muove nei confronti del sistema giudiziario inglese è senza reticenza, giudici ed avvocati descritti quasi sempre come "mezzuomini", buoni solo a gonfiarsi le tasche di soldi per far procedere e slittare le sentenze o giusto per rileggere o inserire codicilli documenti irrilevanti nell' iter giudiziario.
Ciò che piu' mi ha colplito è la capacità di Dickens nel raccontarci questa umanità piegata dai dolori della vita, ogni personaggio si muove per i suoi scopi ed interessi ma sempre avendo nel cuore una moralità presente e fondamentale per gli eventi che si verificheranno nella trama; non è primario che la maggior parte di loro abbia un 'anima ormai corrotta e piegata dai vizi della vita... ma i loro scopi vengono sempre portati avanti da una motivazione chiara, che muoveranno quindi anche le vicende e gli avvenimenti di questa bellissima storia. La psicologia di queste persone è ben descritta, chiara e lapalissiana del loro essere, questo per me è il genio di Dickens, che in mezza frase ti dice e ti definisce tutto quel che c'è da sapere su un personaggio e nient'altro!!
Il finale della storia è una gioia di redenzione e grazia.....Richard e John riconosceranno i loro comportamenti ignobili e si chiederanno pietà a vicenda, Esther avrà possibilità di sciogliere un fidanzamento e convolare a nozze con Woodcourt, il suo vero amato non il protetto e scelto da Jarndyce.
Lady Dedlock dopo aver scoperto la figlia , chiederà perdono di tutto il male commesso e le verità tenute nascoste al marito, Sir Leicester.
Che magnificenza, che bellezza!!!

Incredible - blows away any other Dickens that I have read (although it has been a couple of years). Now, there are issues with it: it FEELS long in a way that some great long books don't, which I think is due to the varying narrative stakes of the subplots; Esther Summerson, though delightfully written, is perhaps the most consistently GOOD character in the history of literature - you root for her but it is the rooting of a manipulated reader; and the absurdity of the coincidences is just downright staggering.

But, it's a huge achievement on 5 fronts.

1. On the line level, it's gorgeous. Dickens was on a roll for 800 pages. I am often guilty of skimming through landscape descriptions but not here.

2. The plot should seem Byzantine, but there are confluences of subplots and A plot that are massively satisfying, the love stuff is mostly juicy and good, there is a 70 page sequence toward the end that is so suspenseful that you'll read it in 2 seconds, and it is varied enough in voice that you mostly sail along with it. (A lot of the criticism I've read focuses on the alternating 1st and 3rd person - I really dug that and thought it was an accomplishment.)

3. I think a great book needs to have at least one completely unique scene that just sears itself into memory (e.g. the flood sequence in the Makioka Sisters). This book has it - the spontaneous combustion section is as good and creepy as anything.

4. The most important part for me; This is (even beyond Gaddis) the most generous book with tertiary characters that I have EVER read. 40-50 characters deep, and they are all unique, and well drawn, and quirky, and hilarious. A few favorites are Detective Bucket, who is a mixture of Gene Parmesan and Marlowe; the woman who loves her two ex-husbands more than her current husband; Mr Chadband, a preacher who "runs on train oil"; and the foppish Mr. Turveydrop. Throw in the exceptionally likable main supporting characters and it's a helluva cast.

5. it's really, really, really funny.

Bleak House is, I think, not quite as good as East of Eden, but it slots in with it nicely. It's epic, familially inclined, socially critical, has some great evil characters, and, as far as I have read, is an accomplishment beyond the rest of the author's oeuvre. Recommended, if you can spare it the time and the occasional eyeroll.

A perfect Autumn Read!




"LONDON ... Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.”

Bleak House, Charles Dickens

Bleak House is a nineteenth century novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published as a serial between March 1852 and September 1853.

The novel has many characters and several sub-plots, and the story is told partly by the novel's heroine, Esther Summerson, and partly by an omniscient narrator.

At the center of Bleak House is a long-running legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which came about because someone wrote several conflicting wills.

Dickens uses this case to satirise the English judicial system. Though the legal profession criticized Dickens' satire as exaggerated, this novel helped support a judicial reform movement, which culminated in the enactment of legal reform in the 1870's.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «خانه قانون زده (بلیک هاوس)»؛ «خانهٔ متروک»؛ «خانه غمزده»؛ نویسنده چارلز دیکنز؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هجدهم ماه فوریه سال1970میلادی

عنوان: خانه قانون زده (بلیک هاوس)؛ نویسنده: چارلز دیکنز؛ مترجم ابراهیم یونسی؛ مشخصات نشر تهران، امیرکبیر، سال1345؛ در هجده و891ص؛ چاپ دوم سال1356؛ در907ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، سحر، در1368، دو جلد در942ص؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، نگاه، سال1387؛ شابک9789643515256؛ در941ص؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان بریتانیا - سده 19م

عنوان: خانه قانون زده (کوتاه شده)؛ نویسنده: چارلز دیکنز؛ مترجم: بابک تختی؛ تهران، دبیر، سال1395، در88ص؛ شابک9786005955941؛

عنوان: خانه قانون زده (کوتاه شده)؛ نویسنده چارلز دیکنز؛ مترجم: نیلوفر زارع؛ تهران، کیان افراز، سال1396، در58ص؛ شابک9786008854340؛

خانهٔ متروک، یا «خانه غمزده (خانه قانون زده)»، نهمین رمان «چارلز دیکنز» است، که در سال1853میلادی نگاشته‌ شده‌ است؛ این داستان زندگی غم‌ انگیز طبقه ی کارگر فقیر «انگلستان» را، نشان می‌دهد؛ «خانه غمزده» نخستین بار، بصورت داستان دنباله‌ دار، از روز اول ماه مارس سال1852میلادی، تا روز بیستم ماه سپتامبر سال1853میلادی، در هفته‌ نامه ای چاپ شد؛ در رمان «خانه قانون‌ زده»، «بازرس باکت» ماجرای قتل وکیلی به‌ نام «تاکینگ هورن» را، رمزگشایی می‌کند، که در دفترش به قتل رسیده است؛ او هم مانند کارآگاه «دوپن»، در داستان‌‌های «ادگار آلن پو»، خود را عقل کل می‌داند، و گرچه آدم متواضعی به نظر می‌رسد، اما در ماجرای بازجویی از «کنت ددلاک»، کمی از خود راضی، نشان می‌دهد؛ با اینحال، «باکت» کارآگاه خیلی باهوشی نیست، و حل معمای داستان، بیشتر به‌ علت شناخت او، از محلات «لندن» ناشی می‌شود؛ در حقیقت به‌ رغم این‌که «بازرس فیلد» در پژوهشهای خود، خیلی قرص و محکم جلو می‌رود، اما در رمان «خانه قانون‌ زده»، «لیدی ددلاک»، از چنگ «بازرس باکت» می‌گریزد؛ با اینهمه، او نقصی ندارد، و به وظایفش خیلی دقیق عمل می‌کند؛ پژوهشهایش کاملاً منطقی است، نویسنده می‌کوشد، تا الگوی نسبتاً مثبتی، از یک کارآگاه پلیس را، به خوانشگرش ارائه دهد؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 06/12/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 04/08/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی