Rating: 
Summary: Dickens' best
Review: (possible spoilers)I have just started reading this book again and notice that the Chancellor asks Mr. Kenge if Esther is party to the suit of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. Mr. Kenge assures the great man that she isn't. Dramatic irony! She is the illegitimate daughter of one of the parties. Yes, everybody complains about Esther's sentimentality. But as the part-narrator, Dickens uses her to make some funny and sharp observations about the other characters, especially the woman who eventually becomes Esther's (reluctant?) mother-in-law, and is always going on about her aristocratic Welsh and Scots relations. Esther is a lonely child brought up in a loveless home - can we blame her for trying to gain some love for herself, her stated ambition? Isn't being sweet and kind a ploy that's likely to succeed? I think we're meant to conclude that it wouldn't have worked unless she really was sweet and kind. Dickens almost gets away with marrying her to her guardian, a man at least twice her age. (He left his wife for a 17-year-old.)
Rating: 
Summary: It's mighty mighty, just lettin' it all hang out
Review: Academics seem to have declared this Dickens's best book, and although I enjoyed it a great deal I must say that I enjoy Character Focused Dickens much more than Epic Sprawl Dickens. David Copperfield - even though I can see how it's more flawed than this book - is such a warm and beautiful book, completely unforgettable. Even Pickwick, which is clearly inferior to Bleak House, is a book I would much rather reread. Nonetheless, Dickens has like ten novels that everyone should read, and this is one of them. I only have one warning: DON'T BUY THIS EDITION! There's a cheap edition that has, as an introduction, Nabokov's lecture on Bleak House - which is the most helpful guide you can ever ask for, as well as a wonderful and hilarious piece of writing in itself. Also, these new black Penguins are expensive and have a tendency to get all scratched up immediately. Bleak House is probably Dickens's most elegantly constructed book. The quality of his prose was never better - just read the first twenty pages: astonishing. But (I know, everyone complains about the sentimentality) Esther Summerson is INTOLERABLE! Every time she narrated a chapter and was more and more good and humble I was tempted to throw the book against a wall. She is a horrible horrible character - Dora was something like this in David Copperfield, but at least she dies. And I suppose there are plenty of others like Esther all over Dickens, but rarely are they such major characters who actually get to narrate parts of the book. Big mistake, Charles. Maybe it was necessary for unfolding of the plot, but - still - please. This book failed to arouse human interest in me until the acceleration of the Lady Dedlock plot (of course, anyone of average intelligence can see every twist in Dickens coming a hundred pages ahead) - but still, she's a fascinating character. Find the other edition of the book: it should be read.
Rating:
Summary: Dickens's excoriation of the legal system
Review: Bleak House is Dickens's excoriation of the legal system and his contempt for lawyers and the law's delay permeates every page like the fog that seeps into every cranny of England in the book's brilliant opening. Dickens's narrative alternates between third-person present tense and first-person past tense, the former infused with a deep irony, the latter being the earnest narrative of Esther Summerson, the book's heroine.
Esther has been criticized by many commentators as one of the worst examples of Dickens' pallid goody-goody heroines and, while she maintains a demeanor of almost total ingenuousness, she is not completely unworldly or colourless, unlike her "darling", the insipid Ada who, like Oliver Twist and Dora in Copperfied, barely exists as a character.
The plot revolves around a disputed will that has become legendary in the law courts for its protraction. In his introduction to Bleak House Dickens pointed out that the fictional case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce is not a gross exaggeration:
"At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a suit before the court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. There is another well-known suit in Chancery, not yet decided, which was commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in costs."
The fate of a number of the book's protagonists hinges on some resolution to the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case and, of course, the results are both tragic and comical. There are few outright villains in Bleak House (there is no-one as hideous as a Sikes or a Murdstone), but there is a paralegal named Vholes who is Uriah Heep-like in his unctuousness and there are a panoply of benign scoundrels like the freeloaders Mr. Skimpole and Mr. Turveydrop. Dickens's ability to make the reader convulse with laughter is fully displayed in characters such as Reverend Chadband, with his incessant impromptu sermons laced with rhetorical questions:
"My friends - peace be on this house! On the master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and on the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore, my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours."
and Mrs. Badger, the voluble lady whose husband insists on telling everyone that she was previously married to Captain Swosser and then Professor Dingo ("of European reputation"), makes a brief but memorable appearance:
"You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce a nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser loved that craft for my sake. When she was no longer in commission, he frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk, he would have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarterdeck where we stood as partners in the dance to mark the spot where he fell - raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to say) by the fire from my tops. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes."
Dickens loathes the law and reserves his greatest scorn for its practitioners but he also pokes fun at philanthropists, the upper classes (Sir Leicester Dedlock is an oblivious fool) and anyone with aspirations to be upper class. While his characters are often stereotypes (especially the comic characters who are comic because stereotypes are often funny: when Mrs. Jellyby appears, we know she is going to prattle on about the natives of Boriobla-gha and ignore her family's more pressing needs; we know that Rev. Chadband is going to sermonise at the drop of a hat; we know that Mr. Skimpole will wax lyrical about his total disdain for pecuniary matters - we'd be disappointed if they didn't) the main characters have enough depth to satisfy the needs of great literature, which Bleak House surely is. Dickens's prodigious energy is on full display here, with all his stunning ability to describe people and places and to put his own spin onto everything he observes. Bleak House has it all: the tragedy of Lady Dedlock and Jo; the farce of Snagsby, Smallweed, Skimpole, Badger, Jellyby, Guster, Krook and Guppy; a happy ending for most and the killing-off of a minor character through the unusual device of spontaneous combustion! There is even a murder and a detective story in here, with Inspector Bucket acting as a putative Sherlock Holmes (this, years before Wilkie Collins's "The Moonstone").
The book's title most likely puts the potential reader off because it sounds like the worst Victorian tome, and the fog and the labyrinthine suits at Chancery are certainly grim and bleak. And the novel is, like most of Dickens's works, very long, partly because of the author's energetic verbosity and partly because it was written, like all his novels, in installments for a magazine. Dickens probably sketched out the plot beforehand but added twists and turns as the work was in progress, a testament to his creative and energetic genius and an antidote to our age's demands for quick, digestive literature.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful prose, a bit lacking in plot
Review: Dickens weaves a wonderfully written tale in Bleak House, with tons of fleshed out characters and memorable scenes throughout its 700+ pages. The novel is partly a sardonic diatribe against the ponderously slow English legal system of the time, and partly a story of uncovering some unusual family history. Much of the story is told in first person from the perspective of the young woman Esther Summerson, who is at the heart of the family history intrigue and also somewhat involved in the worthless lawsuit that ruins the lives of a few characters in the novel.
As is typical of Dickens's novels that I've read, characterization in Bleak House is masterful, far better than in just about anything I've read. There are a lot of characters to keep track of, and each one has a very distinct personality. From boisterous Boythorn to mysterious and aloof Lady Dedlock, from pitiful and helpless Jo to sinister Tulkinghorn, from the careful and wary but well-meaning Snagsby to the oily minister Chadband, Dickens assembles perhaps the most varied set of characters in any of his novels.
In addition, the settings are wonderful. The weather in most of the settings is dark, cold, rainy, and foggy. This matches well with the title of the novel. The settings also match the depressing overriding background of the novel, the lawsuit of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. From what I hear, the weather in England is actually like this much of the year!
After all's said and done, I didn't find the plot itself compelling enough to give it five stars. It was a good yarn with moments of excitement and a couple twists near the end, but it seemed like there were two parallel stories going on that never really integrated well. Jarndyce v. Jarndyce didn't have much of a real connection with Esther's family background. In addition, the ending was a bit weak though it did pretty much wrap everything up. I never did quite figure out the meaning of George's letter to Esther near the end though, in Chapter 63.
It's a long read, no question. Took me over four months! I believe it was worth the time, mainly for the delight of getting to know so many unique characters. Oh, and there are many humorous moments as well. I love Snagby's different coughs, Chadband's greasy speeches and mannerisms, old Mr. Turveydrop's deportment, etc. Splendid!
Rating:
Summary: A rose by any other name?well, maybe not
Review: In an age of nuance, it is refreshing to read Dickens' Bleak House. Consider the characters' names: the young, beautiful, or otherwise admirable characters (Esther Summerson, Ada Clare, Allan Woodcourt) are hard to confuse with the villainous, silly, or simply mundane ones (Lord and Lady Dedlock, Krook, Snagsby, Lord Doodle, Miss Flyte). And consider the certainty that, while trials of the noble characters may surely be relied upon, all will be well in the end (well, OK, maybe not for Little Nell, but that's another book). The story of lives sacrificed to a meaningless judicial system - the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce has been going on for generations when the book opens - includes the story of Esther Summerson, whose identity is surrounded by mystery. Esther is one of Dickens' more believable serious female characters, but perhaps she only seems so because she narrates large portions of the book. But it is Dickens' wit that, as usual, steals the show. Human corruption and folly has not changed much since the nineteenth century, and it is a joy to observe it so skillfully skewered.
Rating:
Summary: A rose by any other name¿well, maybe not
Review: In an age of nuance, it is refreshing to read Dickens' Bleak House. Consider the characters' names: the young, beautiful, or otherwise admirable characters (Esther Summerson, Ada Clare, Allan Woodcourt) are hard to confuse with the villainous, silly, or simply mundane ones (Lord and Lady Dedlock, Krook, Snagsby, Lord Doodle, Miss Flyte). And consider the certainty that, while trials of the noble characters may surely be relied upon, all will be well in the end (well, OK, maybe not for Little Nell, but that's another book). The story of lives sacrificed to a meaningless judicial system - the case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce has been going on for generations when the book opens - includes the story of Esther Summerson, whose identity is surrounded by mystery. Esther is one of Dickens' more believable serious female characters, but perhaps she only seems so because she narrates large portions of the book. But it is Dickens' wit that, as usual, steals the show. Human corruption and folly has not changed much since the nineteenth century, and it is a joy to observe it so skillfully skewered.
Rating:
Summary: The Summit
Review: It's a monster of a book, and that's not really a reference to the length necessarily (although at 900+ pages, you can't help but be a little daunted). Bleak House has big plans for you, it wants to grab you and shout at you and whisper at you and tell you ten thousand things all at once in dozens of different accents. It's a book, really it is, with a mission, and an appropriately large dollop of missionary zeal.
Dickens was already a household name when he wrote it. He'd already cast his net far and wide over an increasingly eager audience (Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby had all garnered great praise for him, and Martin Chuzzlewit's extensive American episode - after his trip there in 1842 - had helped his popularity no end in the US). He was world famous. He had also just begun editing the weekly journal Household Words, a publication he hoped would help highlight the social injustices of the age. Bleak House is confident and furiously angry in many respects addressing, as it does, much of the same agenda that Household Words railed against week in week out.
The plot centres on the interminable case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, a years-old law suit creaking its way through Chancery (a reference to two cases: Day v Croft, a suit begun in 1838 and still being heard in 1854; and Jennings v Jennings, begun in 1798 and finally settled in, wait for it, 1878, although, as Dickens says in his Preface, 'if I wanted [more]...I could rain them on these pages, to the shame of a parsimonious public').
"Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in the course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grand-mothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps, since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee house in Chancery Lane, but Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the Court, perennially hopeless."
Circling this legal colossus is a cast as memorable as any that Dickens assembled before or after. The demure and impassive Esther Summerson, a resilient young woman carefully uncovering her past; Lord and Lady Dedlock, landed gentry living in a shadow-filled mansion in rural Lincolnshire; the threatening and ultra-clever lawyer, Tulkinghorn; Jo, a wretched street boy; and a whole swathe of legal junkies, obsessed acolytes flitting around the Courts of Chancery and Lincoln's Inn Fields. Every one always mentions the characters in Dickens - ah! the characters! they say - but then, they're remarkable, and wonderfully realised. But, as the case drags on, things fall apart and the centre - definitely - cannot hold.
When an affidavit is discovered amid the J v J papers, written in a sinister and familiar hand, Tulkinghorn's investigations kick off a series of events that lead down a mazey, dark path towards an unexpected conclusion. The plot becomes ever more labyrinthine and to help us shed some much needed light on the matter we get Inspector Bucket (great name) one of the earliest detectives in fiction.
All is division in Bleak House. The Dedlocks and the suit's lawyers on one side, everybody else on the other. When the two sides meet (weighty social irony in use here) the sparks light up the dark corners of the filthy London streets and someone invariably comes off worse. This is where the anger creeps in. Creeps in? Nah, floods in. This is where Dickens's agenda falls into place like a guillotine and you wonder how he ever managed to get on the side of the Toffs six years later for A Tale of Two Cities:
"Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us, every day."
There's humour though, in fact there are plenty of real laugh out loud moments. The moment when Lord Dedlock discovers that someone has the audacity to stand against him in the election and that he's - egad! - an 'industrialist', is a splendid attack on the baronet's smug pomposity.
Narrative hops around from player to player, resting most often on a first-person account by Esther, who is the conscience of the story, but beyond her everybody gets a focus and story line, and the extended sequence of tying it all together, starting with the solving of the murder about 150 pages out, heralds a very satisfying series of dénouements.
So, is it one of the best books ever written? I'm not at liberty to say, of course, that's a question I'll have to come back to in my dotage. Certainly, I can't think of anything to put in the negative column. Dickens is fastidious in his plotting, there's nothing he leaves unsaid. There's no filler here (an amazing thing to say you might think, but it's true), no dull chapters, no extensive flowery prose, no muttered 'get on with it' moments. He fulfils his obligations to his social concerns, he creates sympathy and antipathy where he requires it. The villain, Chancery, gets a roasting ... yet he has a surprise for everyone at the last.
But, I am smitten with it, yes. I do think it's going to stay with me forever and - get this - I'm already looking forward to the re-read. I was blown away.
Rating:
Summary: Dickens at his best
Review: It's dark, it's absurd, it's mysterious, and so complicated that one character actually spontaneously combusts. It took me nearly six weeks to work my way through this book, and keeping track of the characters (many of whom have more than one name) was a serious challenge, but the book absolutely (if you'll parson the pun) blew me away.
Esther is a lot more interesting than most people seem to think - she's neurotic, she's obsessive-compulsive, and terribly, terribly repressed, entirely on purpose (I'm shocked that more hasn't been written about the possibility that she's grappling with homosexuality, covering up her feelings by pushing herself into 'duty, duty.') (Well, that's what one does in literary criticism nowadays. In the fifties they looked for commies, then they moved into civil rights...now the hunt is on for the gay characters). Without her cheeriness (even though it seems like she's faking it), the novel's view of the world would be hopelessly bleak. The balance is good.
Switching back and forth between Esther's first-person narrative and the omniscient, nameless narrator was really rather avant-garde for Dickens, who never tried the same thing again. And the prose in the omniscient sections is, at times, as great as any prose Dickens ever wrote.
Dark, spooky, foggy and muddy though the book is, it's also hilarious. Mrs. Jellyby's story, and several of the other comical, upper-class goofballs made me laugh out loud.
It's a great detective story, a great mystery, a soap opera, a legal thriller, social commentary, the memoire of a neurotic, and , in a way, a 1000 page shaggy-dog story. Quintessentially Victorian, and weird enough to be post-modern. It's also a bit of a mess, but let's overlook that for a moment - it's worth it.
Rating:
Summary: The Lone Esther Summerson Fan
Review: Just finished this tremendous, huge indictment of the failed legal system and the poisoned society which both suffers and supports it. Now, I may be alone in this, but I'm a true fan of Esther Summerson. For me, she's perhaps the best-drawn character -- visible, audible, and completely believable. Why are people so annoyed by Victorian sentimentality? Try letting Esther, and characters like her in other Dickens novels, stand in their own light, without being judged by modern-day, jaded skepticism. Dickens being in a class by himself, this book nevertheless receives high marks for cohesive plot and consistent character portraits throughout. For sheer storytelling, I liked Dombey much better (and Barnaby for that matter). Anyway, if you haven't read Bleak House, just start.
Rating:
Summary: A very complex book! Certainly an epoch.
Review: This book is one of Dickens' longest, and it's certainly one of the most complex. "Bleak House" is a very wonderful book. In it we have Dickens' great characterizations and sense of atmosphere as well as a social commentary on the English legal system as it was in Dickens' day. It's a combination horror, mystery and social diatribe, but there is humour in it as well. This is not an easy book to read because it is long and complex, but it's certainly worth the effort. I read it quite a few years ago, and realize that I probably have to read it again soon. Actually it's one of those books that you can't get all the stuff out of the first time round. More and more will come out the more times you read it. I liked the book, but it wasn't my favourite Dickens. I'm afraid that I have to give that honour to another book of his.
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