Shakespeare is first. Dickens is second. Then the rest.

‘Bleak House’ reverberates and seduces and sparkles with beautiful language. I found myself drunk with the lovely sentences. It took a bit to focus on the plot, and I needed to re-read and re-read (joyful duty) but I was finally able to pay attention to the story. Oh, what perspicacious depths! Lost again….

I cannot believe this was a serialized novel. I always thought published serials required quick production and a disgusting amount of audience pandering to the lowest common denominator (which I say having been avidly spellbound by low culture myself, it being my first love). If this is representative of the lowest common denominator of the reading English public at the time, I’m in absolute awe.

I am not unaware that Dickens lived a life when he was a middle-aged adult which has given us cause to call him out as a hypocrite, but I don’t care. As anyone who may have read some of my reviews about controversial, but who I think are great, authors, may have noticed, a writer of immense talent will cast a spell on me that will silence my condemnation of their real-life beliefs or life choices (to a point). Oh well. Still, Dickens’ real-life crimes of the heart have not dimmed my admiration of his writing or the perceptive sharpness he possessed when casting his intellect towards society and people (although not when observing himself perhaps).

Dickens is the master of meander. His subplots and characters wander all over the streets and country lanes of 1850 England living peculiar and varied lives, yet there isn't a single extraneous sentence. Whether his books are novella length or a thousand page opus, when the reader has given up hope any of the book will come to a point, he pulls it all together in a series of amazing coincidences. But he is not entirely a hopeful happy ending style of writer. Instead, he strives for realism with ironic authorial asides. The exceptions Dickens makes in his usual narrative style are those chapters usually narrated by a woman or child who somehow hold onto their innocence or moral sensitivity. Frankly, these characters annoy me the most, but they often are very important to the story. They rarely seem to have much intelligence. But these characters often illuminate how sweet life could be, or they rescue deserving victims and orphans of crime or misadventure. (Dickens also thickens his stories with a huge crowd of odd individuals, crazy or bizarre, but never beyond the realm of possibility. I’ve read the reason these folks somehow stay in the world of possibility is because Dickens actually knew real people like his characters who lived in London. Dickens was extremely gregarious and he often went up to total strangers to talk.) Dickens never forgot the first rule in writing - entertain.

Usually, his main theme appears to be there are far too many terrible people who destroy human decency by circumventing and suborning the legal systems, religious institutions and elected leaders meant to protect it. A usual secondary theme is that these terrible people do not spring from the ground full-grown, but have been shaped, designed and directed by other terrible people in their pasts. The conclusion Dickens wants the reader to develop is that since we can't depend reliably on society or institutions to follow common sense or life-saving rules, or they use rules to hide depredations and thefts, we need to individually ‘do the right thing’ as much as we can. When individuals work hard to ease the ills of society, it’s good. But, a subset idea, explored in ‘Bleak House’, we should look around our neighborhoods for problems to solve and take care of our families, and only then do what we can elsewhere.

‘Bleak House’ is a thorough study on everything wrong about 1853 civilization. Civics and the Law as practiced by Western humanity is a Bleak House indeed. Dickens is still on high school TBR literature lists because the issues he highlights with sour humor in this novel, and many of the others he has written, are as contemporary and as virulent now as in his era. (However, I wouldn't start a teen on this particular Dickens novel unless they are ridiculous readers.)

The lawsuit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, spawning from a family dispute over a will, has become famous at the Court of Chancery, London. It has eaten up the cash reserves and bankrupted dozens of Jarndyce relatives stretching back for generations - and still it goes on. Lawyers eagerly continue the case, unscrupulously goading yet another Jarndyce relative in taking on the expense of appeal after appeal. But this isn't simply a cause for amusing the public and lining the pockets of lawyers. Human lives are in suspense or in danger, depending on the outcome of the case, if ever settled. A huge fortune is at stake.

Esther Summerson is not a Jarndyce as far as she knows. She is an orphan who has been fortunate enough to somehow gain the friendship and support of wealthy benefactors. We see her grow up under the care of a coldhearted woman, and then Esther is removed from there when still a child and lives in a school where she learns how to teach. Her benefactor then employs her to be teacher and companion to a young girl, Ada Clare, who is a Jarndyce. They both are moved to Bleak House under the protection of John Jarndyce, owner of Bleak House, along with another Jarndyce relative, Richard Carstone.

Although the main story thread follows Esther and the Jarndyce cousins and their acquaintances and friends, these chapters are heavily interwoven with another family thread, Lord and Lady Leicaster Dedlock, along with the lives of their lawyer, Mr. Tulkinghorn and their servants.

Another thread follows various inhabitants and their families and friends who live around a street called Chancery Lane (not to be confused with many other buildings and locations Dickens mentions in passing with Chancellory or Chancery in their names as well). The Chancery Lane area which is foremost to the story is a lane half a mile away from the Court of Chancery. It is an area where poor people have their shops and apartments, often with Chancery in the building or business name. They all have business or interest in court cases and lawyers who are lawyering before THE Court of Chancery, or work for the Lord Chancellor. I found these titles (not to mention the various families) to be most confusing, but eventually I got sorted out.

All three threads spin around each other tighter and tighter as the story progresses. At first it is difficult to see how the dozens and dozens of characters and their family groups (some of whom live outside these three main thread locations) could have any connection with each other. Since they are symbolic of types of people and conditions, the first guess of why their presence in the book was they were to, perhaps, illuminate how various denizens of Victorian England live and think. Which is true. But each is also important to resolving the Jarndyce lawsuit, so none of them are window dressing after all.

If you haven't already guessed from the size of the book alone, this is a complex and convoluted plot. Adult readers of the huge contemporary soap opera fantasy trilogies now popular should have no problems whatsoever in reading a novel of this length. However, the English is a bit archaic, and unlike most of today’s fantasy genre, this is all about realistic non-magical gritty social deprivations which can only be solved by the involvement of sympathetic and ordinary neighbors, employers or family members. Very few dramatic battles, weaponry or spells are involved (none, in fact) - only the hard work of love, affection, nuanced conversation, social duty, the secret giving of financial resources and the elbow grease of nursing and housework in a world of horse-drawn carriages, open sewers and poverty with no government safety nets, such as unemployment insurance.

Why take the time to read this doorstop of a book? The characters and the poetry of the writing are the Big Magic. As the characters develop wisdom - or not - as they face dramatized, but yet realistic, trials, tribulations and mysteries regarding who they are and their place in the world, and understanding their identity is partially a personal choice as well as a social responsibility, I couldn’t help becoming drawn into the book’s world and caring deeply about most of these people.

Dickens often employs the ‘orphan who is really related to someone rich’ device, but he NEVER does it without genuine emotion and writing that will break your heart. He avoids saccharine conclusions (but he does keep happy endings that have been compromised to a degree), so even as he initially deploys trite crowd-pleasing plot devices he often veers suddenly into an unexpected denouement. The only reason everyone now ‘knows how it turns out’ is because almost all of Dickens’ original stories have been made into movies or ‘appropriated' into other stories. But from personal experience, the movies and appropriations are SO reduced in the actual artistry and depths Dickens originally gave his story.

“He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice. I couldn’t wonder at that, for it was mellow and full, and gave great importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with obvious satisfaction, and sometimes gently beat time to his own music with his head, or rounded a sentence with his hand.”

This quote is actually about a character in the book, but it could also describe Dickens. He may have been somewhat self-aggrandizing in real life, but he backed it up with solid insight and talent.

Due to my activities around Death and Mr Pickwick I read Bleakhouse. An absolute classic. Jo the streetsweep, and NEMO are very intereting. I did a full review on my facebook site. Clear recommendation!

This was only my second time reading Bleak House, which happened to be a group read in two of the goodreads groups I belong to. But while I started reading this according to the twenty instalments in which it was originally published (as the first of the groups was reading it), I fell behind, and then again fell behind, so read a little less than half continuously. Bleak House is Dickens’ ninth novel, and is centred around a legal case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, a civil suit involving various wills, which has continued in the courts since no one knows when. The law’s delays and how it has impacted many many lives, ruining one after another, is the main theme, but being Dickens, and a serial, there are several plot threads, all of which connect in some way to the suit or those involved in it. And while the title, and the central theme may be ‘bleak’, the story itself is far from it—there is love and hate, romance and marriage, murder and blackmail, and hidden secrets aplenty.

I loved reading this one, although the fact that I took a break in the middle (not because of the book) meant I took a little while getting back in, but once I did, I really enjoyed following all the different storylines. Dickens of course deals with a serious theme, and (I think this may be a bit of a spoiler) very realistically portrays how a young man gets to easily drawn into something that is pointless and can only destroy what you have, despite having an instance of just that before him. He also makes a comment on another issue (perhaps one he observed during his day), something that is a tad enforcing stereotypes but also bringing up an important point that holds good even today—the stereotypical part was of women so concerned with doing good/charity that they are unconcerned with their homes and families that are going to bits, but the second was more about the fact that charity is equally needed at home (I mean one’s own country, city, or town has enough people that need our help) and while that is the case, why do we go to faraway lands to be charitable? But these themes aside, this is in so many ways an entertaining story, there is a murder plot, and if I remember right one of the first fictional detectives. There are so many secrets and reveals, particularly in the second half that one doesn’t see coming and that keep one reading on. And of course characters, which is another favourite element of mine in Dickens’ books, the ‘mad’ Miss Flite who is so absorbed by her suit that she seems to have lost all sense of reality (and her she sees and understands much more than we realise at first); the childlike Harold Skimpole who claims time and again that he can’t understand money or responsibility, and yet seems to misuse them quite as one who does, and the formidable Lady Dedlock, who is certainly not the ideal Dickens heroine but certainly one of his most interesting ones, and many others. And the writing style--switching between a narrator who sees all and speaks in a critical voice and our heroine, Esther Summerson who much more innocently tells her own story--was something that I don’t think I’ve come across in any books of that period. An excellent read in so many ways.

n  Bleak House, diario di bordon

Affrontare questa lettura è stato come fare un viaggio sulle montagne russe, alternando fasi in cui si arranca faticosamente a fasi di andamento più precipitoso. O ancor meglio, trovo una metafora più calzante, è stato come veder continuamente cambiare la direzione del vento: da est, poi da nord, poi ancora da est, poi da sud.

Primissima esperienza con Charles Dickens (se si esclude una orribile edizione/riduzione per ragazzi de La Piccola Dorrit che mi capitò tra le mani da bambina e che non mi fece nemmeno venire voglia di proseguire oltre la prima pagina). Nella primissima fase della lettura ho dovuto ammettere con me stessa, mio malgrado, di non amare il libro particolarmente. Mi dicevo "si farà" e gli davo tempo, e poi ovviamente c'è sempre la mia testardaggine a non voler mollare un libro una volta iniziato; comunque nei primi capitoli mi dicevo che se avessi dovuto dare un giudizio a quel che avevo letto fino lì, oltre le tre misere stelline della sufficienza stiracchiata proprio non sarei potuta andare.

E poi ok, verso il capitolo diciassettesimo mi dico che le cose iniziano ad ingranare un po' meglio. Bisogna comunque prendere nota che se Hugo impiega due/trecento pagine per fare ingranare le sue storie perché prima deve fare tutte le sue digressioni da zibaldone (ripenso a L'uomo che ride dove fino a pagina duecentocinquantaerotti non succede assolutamente niente, e penso invece con rimpianto a come Dumas sa coinvolgere e avvincere il lettore già dal primo capitolo), allo stesso modo Dickens prima di partire davvero deve prendersi il tempo di fare tutte le sue polemiche (in primis sull'iniquità del sistema giudiziario e sulla filantropia "all'ingrosso": due temi attualissimi, chissà quanto ci troverebbe da ridire oggi...), di fare le sue ironie più o meno feroci, e srotolare tutto il suo infinito campionario di caricature e macchiette.

Concordo anche io come tanti altri sul dato di fatto che la vena polemica ha l'aria di essere forse un po' troppo insistente, e altro dato di fatto è che il romanzo risente più di altri dell'essere stato originariamente pubblicato a puntate. Ma il modo in cui incastra le due voci narranti e i diversi filoni della trama, è comunque un modo assai elegante, lo riconosco.
E in più, il fatto di raccontare il XIX sec. in diretta dal XIX sec, non ha prezzo. Anche se calca la mano sulle caricature, la dose di realismo delle ambientazioni è davvero impagabile, specialmente nell'attenzione verso le luci: i lampioni a gas lungo la strada all'imbrunire, le luci dalle finestre, gli interni rischiarati dal fuoco del camino danno l'impressione di guardare un Caravaggio o un Lanfranco. Fatte le dovute differenze dei soggetti, ovvio. E ancora: i colori del cielo, gli umori rugiadosi dell'erba e degli alberi, l'aspetto delle case inserito nella narrazione come fossero anch'esse personaggi con un proprio carattere. E' da notare come l'autore riesca ad esprimere il suo meglio (secondo i miei modesti e umili gusti) nelle atmosfere lugubri e drammatiche, molto di più e molto meglio che in quelle solari e/o comiche.
L'ambientazione principale è una Londra splendida e al tempo stesso spaventosa e piacevolmente uguale a quella propostaci da O'Brian ne Il rovescio della medaglia, e non v'è dubbio alcuno che da Dickens questi abbia tratto amplissima ispirazione.

Un poco dopo il capitolo venti, ecco che il vento riprende a soffiare da est, mi accorgo di essere oltre il 40% del romanzo eppure l'autore sta ancora cincischiando nell'introdurre nuovi personaggi, ancora e ancora. L'istinto è quello di prenderlo a schiaffi e/o supplicarlo di tirare le fila del discorso con la gran sfilza di personaggi che già ha messo in campo. L'istinto è di nuovo quello di abbandonare: leggere per senso del dovere e non per piacere è una mezza tortura (oltre che una cosa da stupidi integrali).
Le atmosfere, le descrizioni, le ambientazioni, le arguzie fatte di poche pennellate, tutte queste cose continuano a piacermi. Ma l'insistenza sui tratti estremamente caricaturali e macchiettistici, l'insistenza sulla vena polemica e soprattutto l'ostinazione nel produrre una ridda di personaggi secondari ciascuno con la sua storia e la sua famigliola, sebbene si speri e si intuisca che queste linee secondarie arrivino poi tutte a loro modo a ricongiungersi, queste esagerazioni mi hanno esasperata. Si percepisce fin troppo bene come lo scopo dell'intera narrazione sia il puro e semplice sciorinare il campionario di marionette, e temo grandemente di arrivare a fine racconto senza avere amato particolarmente nessuna di loro, temo il momento in cui il sollievo per aver portato a termine un "impegno" si riveli essere la sensazione prevalente su tutto il resto, mentre al termine di una lettura di questo calibro ci dovrebbe essere il netto rimpianto per aver dovuto dire addio ai protagonisti più amati. Quando la sensazione è la prima delle due, oltre le due stelle proprio non si può andare, e sopra il conto bisogna cospargersi il capo di cenere per aver mancato del tutto l'obiettivo.

La manica a vento cambia debolmente direzione al capitolo trenta e sembra gonfiarsi in maniera più definitiva al capitolo trentaquattro, quello con George e i Bagnet: a partire da questo punto ho iniziato - finalmente - a sentirmi vagamente in sintonia con l'autore. Perché proprio qui? Nessuno lo saprà mai, non è un capitolo in cui ci siano rivelazioni mozzafiato. Fatto sta che a partire da qui inizio ad avere un più sincero interesse per sapere come va a finire e non più soltanto impegno a spingere un elefante su per le scale.

La caratterizzazione dei personaggi non mi ha dato problemi, sin dall'inizio: sono certamente molto caratterizzati e distinti in buoni/cattivi, ma non proprio tagliati con l'accetta; penso che siano molto più tagliati con l'accetta da Hugo, un esempio che vale per tutti è ne I Miserabili, con Javert e i Thénardier cattivi-cattivi di una cattiveria del tutto fine a sé stessa, e Cosette di una bontà-bontà angelica che a mio avviso va anche oltre quella di Ada.

Al 70% della lettura, la "lettera" di John Jarndyce a Esther mi ha spiazzata, ma spiazzata in senso positivo. Da questo momento inizio a percepire la lettura davvero come un romanzo da 5 stelle. Come si concilia tutto questo con il fatto che all'inizio non lo valutavo un soldo bucato e ci sono stati momenti in cui stavo per abbandonarlo? Il fatto che in corso d'opera, cioè nel corso della lettura, l'autore sia stato in grado di capovolgere completamente il mio giudizio, non è forse un ulteriore punto a suo favore?
Procedo con il vento in poppa verso il finale, godendomi finalmente le atmosfere di una Londra coperta da uno strato misto di neve e fanghiglia e silenzio, con un inseguimento davvero mozzafiato e con grandissime aspettative per il finale. E invece, appena prima di entrare in porto, ecco che mi cade di nuovo il vento: ho trovato il finale alquanto sbavato, forse lievemente pasticciato. Alcuni sviluppi della trama erano ben chiari e anticipati a mezze parole già da tanti capitoli, ma mi è sembrato che siano stati tirati via un po' in fretta. Dopo novecento pagine, centinaia di migliaia di parole, forse se ne poteva spendere ancora qualcuna in più.

Alla fine, le due classiche domande:
Soddisfatta di averlo letto? - Sì, tanto
Lo rileggeresti subito da capo? - No, non per intero. Rileggerei i singoli capitoli in cui mi sono sentita più a mio agio.
Prima di scegliere un nuovo Dickens da leggere, dovrò far decantare per qualche tempo le impressioni di questo qui.

I read Bleak House in my late twenties, and was absolutely riveted by it. This is one time when I can honestly say that the novel was just as good as the many excellent adaptations of it.


(1985 Adaptation)

The Pickwick Papers was a good read, but Bleak House will always be my favourite of Dickens' works.


(2005 Adaptation)

I’m finally finished!

I did a read-along with the audiobook narrated by Peter Batchelor and my paperback edition. I love how he narrates Dickens novels!

I’m so glad that I watched Bleak House on Amazon Prime before reading the book. It helped me to understand the story better. Thank you Melissa Martin for telling me about the show! Bleak House is quite enjoyable despite the slower pace compared to his other novels. Dickens has the most interesting characters. I don’t fully understand the political aspects of the story and that’s fine. I got out of it what I wanted and I’m happy with that. The length is intimidating, but it’s definitely worth reading.

So far, my favorites are Great Expectations and David Copperfield, but I have several Dickens novels left to read, so there’s always a chance that I’ll find a new favorite. We shall see by the end of the year!

“He was careless of his life; careless of whether he lived or died, but not actively intent on self harm.”

-Nemo (no man)

"Dickens was an incredible workaholic who walked for miles through the streets of London every day. This wasn't for exercise so much as it was to constantly take in all the environs as material for his novels."

-Peter Ackroyd, "Dickens: Public Life and Private Passion"

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.

Dickens non faceva lo scrittore, lui era LO scrittore

la Casa Desolata è il secondo testo di fondazione del genere crime... che ricordo per i neofiti il genere giallo non esiste, si usa il termine giallo perché gialla era la copertina dei mondadori che ospitavano questi romanzi ma ripeto il genere giallo non esite ... ripetiamolo insieme IL GENERE GIALLO NON ESISTE

Dickens is all about sentiments– you may run down his books as melodramas, tear-jerkers, 'poverty-porn' & so on but there is no denying their visceral appeal, for what are we without sentiments?

Bleak House, Dickens' masterpiece, has all of his staple/ trademark ingredients– an inheritance, a missing will, a mystery, angelic damsels, fairy godfather, old school gentlemen, evil-plotting villains, grotesque caricatures, a wide variety of humour- from biting satire, drollery, to crazy slapstick, social & moral commentary, several deaths, & of course, The Poor– & all of it plays out in the gigantic, dinosaurian shadow of the Chancery Suit of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

Briefly, it is a law suit that's been going on for generations, without any rhyme or reason, so much so that "Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good that has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but it is a joke in the profession."
Merely writing about it gives me headache, let Dickens explain it:

"It's about a will and the trusts under a will—or it was once. It's about nothing but costs now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing, and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs. That's the great question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted away."

This lawsuit & a secondary mystery plot bring together an impressive cast of characters, only fair cause Bleak House celebrates the interconnectedness of people from all walks of life:

"What connexion can there have been between many people in the innumerable histories of this world, who, from opposite sides of great gulfs have nevertheless been very curiously brought together!"

Not since Shakespeare, has a writer given us this diorama/ galaxy of authentic, fully-fleshed out characters, each with their own unique voice! I'm so tempted to share with you their dialogues but it's such a mind-boggling choice that I'll settle for only two examples.
Here's Grandpa Smallweed, all-a-shakin-&-a-cursin:

"Will somebody give me a quart pot?" exclaims her exasperated husband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within his reach. "Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat, you dog, you brimstone barker!" Here Mr. Smallweed, wrought up to the highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws Judy at her grandmother in default of anything else, by butting that young virgin at the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping into his chair in a heap.”

And here's Reverend Chadband with great flourishes of rhetorical style:

"Peace, my friends," says Chadband, rising and wiping the oily exudations from his reverend visage. "Peace be with us! My friends, why with us? Because," with his fat smile, "it cannot be against us, because it must be for us; because it is not hardening, because it is softening; because it does not make war like the hawk, but comes home unto us like the dove. Therefore, my friends, peace be with us! My human boy, come forward!"


No wonder with sleep-inducing preachers like that Christianity doesn't fare well & it is left to a few do-gooders like Mr.Jarndyce, Esther & Dr.Woodcourt to provide succour wherever they can.

In our group read, there were energetic exchanges on the role of women & the nature of charity in the Bleak House universe. Jan-Maat has tackled those issues in his review but just to add my two cents:

The handing over of keys is very important, esp. in our Indian culture; it's a rite of passage where the mother-in-law hands them to the new bride– the power passing from one generation to the next– Indian women know that whosoever holds the household keys, holds the actual reins of power!
Thus Dickens' domesticated "little women" are not powerless- Esther, Mrs.Bagnet- these ladies are the centre of their universe.

Contrast this with the treatment meted out to the likes of Mrs.Jellyby & Mrs.Pardiggle– Dickens demonstrates that as a wife & mother, their first duties are towards the proper upbringing of their children & to a well-oiled household machinery- they fail at these roles, no wonder they fail at "telescopic philanthrophy" & hard charity as well. Is Dickens any different than millions of Americans who voice that before being an international president, Obama should be an American one!
Victorian times were an age of prosperity but the poor remained deprived as usual- consider the current belt-tightening measures in the EU towards charitable causes & you'll understand Dickens' concerns better.
Charity must always begin at home– only it shdn't stop there !

With 1,811 reviews at last count, this review of mine feels somewhat redundant–ignore it by all means but don't ignore the book & its writer– they are infinitely more important. Anyone up for a Year of Dickens-2014– count me in!

I came to Bleak House a hater and left a reluctant fan, not quite believing but willing to believe that there's more to Dickens than I've been giving credit. I still find him long-winded, I still feel his work takes more than its fair share of my time and attention, and I still suspect at heart all his novels are the same, that some Ur-Dickens experience looms over it all, a ruddy cruddy cast populating a grimey-wimey London of ages past where there is never much action and rarely much fun. So, acknowledging the millstone of my prejudgment, I set out to tackle this doorstop with a different attitude. I cast aside any hope of keeping track of who's who and followed the set and setting more than the plot (which is thin and hare-brained) while listening to the music of the narration over the chalkboard nails of the dialogue. And there I found enough one-line zingers, pearls of wisdom, and clever turns of phrase to sustain myself over the long haul. I came to appreciate Dickens as a very absorbing escape from reality, and I came to enjoy playing along.

3.5 stars, begrudgingly. They can't all be A Christmas Carol, but maybe it's more accurate to view that one as the outlier as this is probably Dickens at his true best, putting all the quirks and tics of long-winded rambling to their strongest use.

A biting critique of the court system and the legal profession by the Victorian master of social commentary

Many of the characters of BLEAK HOUSE – including most notably but certainly not limited to John Jarndyce, and his wards Richard Carstone and Ada Clare – are legatees in some version of a will left by a previous scion of the wealthy Jarndyce family. The problem is that there was several versions of the will left behind at various times, in various places, and with varying degrees of approbation and legal authenticity. The interminable multi-generational dispute over which will holds sway and who will be the ultimate wealthy winner of the legal sweepstakes that is Jarndyce v Jarndyce is the core driver of the plot that sustains Dickens brilliant satire and social critique of the law, the legal system, and the legal profession.

But readers looking for themes and social commentary in other areas will find plenty of other cuts of meat to chew on in BLEAK HOUSE – a scathing criticism of the outrageous hypocrisy of organized religion and those who would claim to be organizers for so-called charitable causes; the desperate plight of the impoverished lower class in mid-city London; the struggle (nay, call it an embittered and hostile war) between progressive middle class entrepreneurs who welcomed the burgeoning Industrial Revolution and the traditionalist upper class who feared anything but the most rigid adherence to the status quo; and more.

Despite the presence of a catalogue of characters who clearly fall on the “bad guy” side of the virtue accounting ledger – Tulkinghorn, Krook, Skimpole, Mrs Pardiggle and Jellyby, Chadband, and more – most readers, on reflection will probably come to the conclusion that the main villains of the piece are more thematic in nature – the institution of Chancery court; the legal profession; hypocritical religion and institutional philanthropy’s gathering of charitable contributions; government insensitivity and the treatment of the poor, to note the most obvious examples.

Many readers may be unaware that Dickens’ brilliance broke new literary ground in two different ways.

First, his use of two different narrative styles – an omniscient, invisible narrator who spoke in the present tense, and Esther Summerson, a first person narrator speaking in the past tense who, as a matter of obvious necessity, was restricted to presenting her own view of events subject to her own emotions and opinions. This alternating style of narration was entirely unprecedented in Victorian literature and allowed for the interpretation of the same event from multiple perspectives.

The second (and I personally am eternally grateful for this) is the use of a detective as a front of stage leading character in the investigation of a murder mystery. Our enjoyment of Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie’s work is attributable to their standing on the proverbial shoulders of Charles Dickens, the giant.

Your personal opinion may vary, but I reckon BLEAK HOUSE ultimately to be a tragedy in which the personal affairs of many of the protagonists are, at least in the short term, resolved. But I think many of these resolutions are unsatisfactory and, well, (you guessed it!) bleak! And that death count, my goodness. BLEAK HOUSE, like Shakespeare’s HAMLET, leaves the proverbial stage fairly littered at the close of the curtain with the detritus of corpses who met their demise by an astonishing number of ways and in a bewildering variety of circumstances. (Our reading group reckoned the final tally to be, of course, lucky 13!!)

Whether you agree with my assessment and think of BLEAK HOUSE as tragedy or consider it to be a gritty example of a multi-generation family drama, I hope you’ll agree with me that BLEAK HOUSE is absolutely brilliant and one of the finest examples of classic English literature that you could ever hope to find. If you’re a potential newcomer to Dickens, take your time and don’t give up. Reading, understanding, absorbing, and enjoying Dickens is an acquired taste and a patiently acquired skill. The rewards are well worth the effort.

Paul Weiss

One of the pleasures of reading a few books of an author's work is to see the parallels and changing style. Here in this huge late Dickens slice of life social commentary is combined with comic grotesques. Political commentary is given depth with sentimentality. The Jarndyce and Jarndyce case, a gigantic legal cog wheel whose teeth catch up one smaller wheel after another. All of society seems to be caught up from the street sweeper to the noble Baronet in a single huge mechanism driven by avarice rather than Christian charity.

Agape is the counter force in the novel, but sadly it appears to require sacrifices. The obligatory deaths of children, mothers and fathers for me don't stand up on repeated reading. You can see how Dickens produces his effect. You can see him get the organ grinder ready, watch the monkey put on his sad suit and take out a little violin, a barrow load of freshly peeled onions is on standby on the page, waiting for that last gasp as an innocent soul dies with a sigh and goes off to meet its maker. I found it so overwrought on re-reading that it became comic. This misses the point. My reading experience is not similar to the original reader. They consumed the novel in monthly instalments over two years. One can imagine each one read aloud by the paterfamilias, the materfamilias pausing in her needlework, the children doubly determined to say their prayers at bedtime - just in case - as another death occurs. It is theatre in your living room.

As an aside this sentimentality is very interesting. A few decades before Bleak House average life expectancy in Liverpool was fifteen years and in Manchester maybe as high as eighteen years if you were working class. The 1848 cholera epidemic saw over fifty thousand people dying with diarrhoea and vomiting, yet a couple of years later Dickens is giving us very individual deaths and perhaps unrealistically clean deaths.

Rereading it struck me how long Bleak House is and how much could be stripped away. But again the point is the reading experience. The length and indulgence in the minor character is the fun of the book. In fact it is the minor characters who are fun. The major characters are the heart of the narrative are resolutely not comic.

n  "We are not rich in the bank"n says our heroine Esther (a name that should alert us to the theme of self sacrifice) towards the close of the book. Yet this seems in the context of the novel to be not true. Although not as wealthy as the Dedlocks, money is never an issue for John Jarndyce and his wards. They don't pause to travel by post coach - an expensive way of getting about, money is available to purchase property, money is never a matter of concern. However for many other characters money and the need to earn it or horde it is a constant issue. Something that Dickens does well in an understated way is make clear just how central every shilling can be and how precarious life gets. The comfortable life is the thin skin floating atop a pot of economic misery. Avarice is not simply a sin, it is a basic survival mechanism that distinguishes the unpleasant Smallweeds and Vholes from the ill fated Gridleys and Necketts.

Something that you can see here that comes to fruition in A Tale of Two Cities is the notion of Saxon, Norman and Hortense. Sir Dedlock represent the Norman elite, proud, conservative but perhaps, like the carriages assembled in the novel's funeral cortege, empty. His virtue is chivalric and harkens back to an earlier age. By contrast the younger Rouncewell son has a Saxon face and represents a newer, modern educated and industrialising Britain, a bucolic place of full employment. Dickens' descriptions of the mill town and Rouncewell's industrial town are strikingly cheerful and pleasant. Not something you'd expect after reading Hard Times. No dark, satanic mills here. London by contrast comes across in this book as Cobbett's "Great Wen".

But it is Hortense who is the surprise in the book. Despite the romantic elements in the story and proposals of marriage she is the one truly passionate character. Although present in only a few pages her passion drives a good chunk of the story. Her refusal to be bought off with a few coins will be echoed a few years later in A Tale of Two Cities. There is so much power in that one figure that I can't help but imagine her as embodying Dickens. The violence of her passion and its powerful effect on the narrative pull the story towards her.

At the other extreme from Hortense are the trinity of self-effacing characters who are the centre of the book, Esther Summerson, John Jarndyce and Lady Dedlock. Their love is self denying and at various point and with varying degrees of success they manage to sacrifice their own happiness for the the good of others. Esther seems to be a perfect "Angel in the House". Each part of the trinity embodies Agape, even at the cost in Lady Dedlock's case of that honour uniquely feminine that should be preserved for the aftermath of legal nuptials, if one may be so bold as to suggest such a delicate matter on a family website.

This then takes us to a central concern of the novel - good and bad charity. The good charity of our trinity, is dignified, individualised and with one possible exception, helpful. By contrast charity is for Mrs Pardiggle a continuation of politics by other means. Mrs Pardiggle's aggressive charity which seeks to police the poor seems particularly resonant. Perhaps rather like the poor themselves, it has always been with us. Even more extremely painted is the quixotic Mrs Jellyby. Her African colonisation scheme aims to 'educate' the Africans in plantation work and provide English settlers with employment as overseers ends not just with the local King wanting to sell the survivors for rum but also, since she is not an Angel in the House, the bankruptcy of her husband.

If Esther is the ideal woman then Mrs Jellyby is her opposite. In Mrs Jellyby charity is actually shown as destructive to her 'proper' role as housekeeper. Mrs Jellyby's activities are really very interesting because here we have a woman entirely focused on political activity, quasi-Imperial colonisation and poverty relief - but Dickens uses this as a source of humour. For him this is fundamentally ridiculous activity for a woman to undertake. Votes for Women is the last crazy cause she embarks upon. I wonder if John Stuart Mill was a fan of Dickens, or for that matter what did Mrs Gaskell make of this?

The central message is a Christian one. The hypocritical Christianity of Chadband or the judgemental faith of Miss Barbary are presented to us only to be disapproved of by the author. In the face of a legalistic and judgemental world in which avarice is a means of survival only the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charity offer a more palatable alternative and more importantly an alternative that Dickens doesn't poke fun at.