Rating: 
Summary: Dickens's greatest novel
Review: "Bleak House" may well be Dickens's greatest novel. Among other famous writers, Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov both thought so. Dickens uses two different narrators with two highly distinctive and impressionistic styles to illuminate his plot. The narrative itself is as tightly constructed as the bricks in an Egyptian pyramid. The novel accords us a panoramic view of the entirety of Victorian society -- its upper classes, its lower classes, its philanthropists, its charlatans, and its genuine heroes.
Rating:
Summary: Deep, dark, delicious Dickens!
Review: "There is little to be satisfied in reading this book"?? I couldn't disagree more. Bleak House left a profound impression on me, and was so utterly satisfying a reading experience that I wanted it never to end. I've read it twice over the years and look forward to reading it again. Definitely my favorite novel.I don't know what the previous reviewer's demands are when reading a novel, but mine are these: the story must create its world - whatever and wherever that world might be - and make me BELIEVE it. If the novelist cannot create that world in my mind, and convince me of its truths, they've wasted my time (style doesn't matter - it can be clean and spare like Orwell or verbose like Dickens, because any style can work in the hands of someone who knows how to use it). Many novels fail this test, but Bleak House is not one of them. Bleak House succeeds in creating a wonderfully dark and complex spider web of a world. On the surface it's unfamiliar: Victorian London and the court of Chancery - obviously no one alive today knows that world first hand. And yet as you read it you know it to be real: the deviousness, the longing, the secrets, the bureaucracy, the overblown egos, the unfairness of it all. Wait a minute... could that be because all those things still exist today? But it's not all doom and gloom. It also has Dickens's many shades of humor: silliness, word play, comic dialogue, preposterous characters with mocking names, and of course a constant satirical edge. It also has anger and passion and tenderness. I will grant one thing: if you don't love reading enough to get into the flow of Dickens's sentences, you'll probably feel like the previous reviewer that "...it goes on and on, in interminable detail and description...". It's a different dance rhythm folks, but well worth getting used to. If you have to, work your way up to it. Don't start with a biggie like Bleak House, start with one of his wonderful short pieces such as A Christmas Carol. Dickens was a gifted storyteller and Bleak House is his masterpiece. If you love to dive into a book, read and enjoy this gem!
Rating:
Summary: Deep, dark, delicious Dickens!
Review: "There is little to be satisfied in reading this book"?? I couldn't disagree more. Bleak House left a profound impression on me, and was so utterly satisfying a reading experience that I wanted it never to end. I've read it twice over the years and look forward to reading it again. Definitely my favorite novel. I don't know what the previous reviewer's demands are when reading a novel, but mine are these: the story must create its world - whatever and wherever that world might be - and make me BELIEVE it. If the novelist cannot create that world in my mind, and convince me of its truths, they've wasted my time (style doesn't matter - it can be clean and spare like Orwell or verbose like Dickens, because any style can work in the hands of someone who knows how to use it). Many novels fail this test, but Bleak House is not one of them. Bleak House succeeds in creating a wonderfully dark and complex spider web of a world. On the surface it's unfamiliar: Victorian London and the court of Chancery - obviously no one alive today knows that world first hand. And yet as you read it you know it to be real: the deviousness, the longing, the secrets, the bureaucracy, the overblown egos, the unfairness of it all. Wait a minute... could that be because all those things still exist today? But it's not all doom and gloom. It also has Dickens's many shades of humor: silliness, word play, comic dialogue, preposterous characters with mocking names, and of course a constant satirical edge. It also has anger and passion and tenderness. I will grant one thing: if you don't love reading enough to get into the flow of Dickens's sentences, you'll probably feel like the previous reviewer that "...it goes on and on, in interminable detail and description...". It's a different dance rhythm folks, but well worth getting used to. If you have to, work your way up to it. Don't start with a biggie like Bleak House, start with one of his wonderful short pieces such as A Christmas Carol. Dickens was a gifted storyteller and Bleak House is his masterpiece. If you love to dive into a book, read and enjoy this gem!
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary construct of the human imagination.
Review: ...for anyone ever caught in the toils of the legal system, this is a brilliant cautionary tale...Not only does Dickens fill the pages with his usual vast cast of amazing characters, Bleak House also contains some sublime descriptive narrative for which the author is less well known...As with Jarndyce in Jarndyce, this book requires immense patience on the part of the reader-but, savored slowly, is a richly rewarding experience.
Rating:
Summary: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Review: A edifying tale of the legal profession's self-serving instinct, of the self-absorption of hygienically-challenged do-gooders, and the folly of relying on either. Oh, there's more to it than that, but I don't want to spoil it for you.
Rating:
Summary: Step back in time, '1984-Orwell'-1840's Dickens style
Review: Ada Clair and Richard Carstone come to live as wards of John Jarndyce at Bleak House, a manor in the English country side. Their governess is Esther Summerston, an orphan, who in the course of the novel gets three proposals of marriage. Quite an accomplishment for a modest unassuming Victorian maiden. One prospective suitor is a bit pesky, another too old and the third, well...you can imagine how perplexing this attention can all be for mild mannered Esther. As Richard Carstone matriculates to his majority he and Ada come to profess their love for one another. At the same time, Richard becomes preoccupied with a contested will, the infamous Jarndyce v Jarndyce which has wended its way through chancery for...could it be...decades? His zeal to win is reinforced by spendthrift man-child Harold Skimpole and a lawyer named Boythorn. Oh, there is intrigue aplenty here. Another lawyer seems to thrive on putting the screws to folks. Barrister Talkinghorn brings down the arrogant Lady Deadlock with his discovery of a child born out of wedlock. Instrumental in the unraveling of her mystery is a poor street urchin, Little Jo, whose life and fate are the stuff of nightmares. The mistreatment he receives make me shudder. Well, Dickens has in Bleak House quite a study in greed, primarily the greed of lawyers whose fees dry up the goods when petitioners come to chancery. It is a somber slow paced book well crafted and rewarding to the patient 21st century reader. For the instant, just add water types, skim the book, skip the slow laborious places...
Rating:
Summary: Nothing bleak about this...
Review: After years without picking up a novel by Dickens (memories of starchy classes at school), I decided to plunge into "Bleak House", a novel that had been sitting on my bookshelf for about ten years, waiting to be read. Although I found it heavy going at first, mainly because the style is so unfamiliar to modern readers, after about ten pages I was swept up and carried off, unable to put the hefty tome down until I had finished it. This book is a definite classic. The sheer scope of the tale, the wit of the satire (which could still be applied to many legal proceedings today) and the believable characters gripped me up until the magnificent conclusion. One particularly striking thing is the "cinematic" aspect of certain chapters as they switch between different angles, building up to a pitch that leaves the reader breathless. I can't recommend "Bleak House" too highly. And I won't wait so long before reading more Dickens novels.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing bleak about this...
Review: After years without picking up a novel by Dickens (memories of starchy classes at school), I decided to plunge into "Bleak House", a novel that had been sitting on my bookshelf for about ten years, waiting to be read. Although I found it heavy going at first, mainly because the style is so unfamiliar to modern readers, after about ten pages I was swept up and carried off, unable to put the hefty tome down until I had finished it. This book is a definite classic. The sheer scope of the tale, the wit of the satire (which could still be applied to many legal proceedings today) and the believable characters gripped me up until the magnificent conclusion. One particularly striking thing is the "cinematic" aspect of certain chapters as they switch between different angles, building up to a pitch that leaves the reader breathless. I can't recommend "Bleak House" too highly. And I won't wait so long before reading more Dickens novels.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, funny, romantic
Review: Along with Martin Chuzzlewit, my favorite of all Dickens' books. It's a real shame that Dickens is no longer part of the reading curriculum in many U.S. schools. Somehow he's become regarded as not "contemporary" enough, or too "difficult" for our kids, so schools opt for authors who don't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the Master. Sure, it takes a bit of effort to get through the first fifty pages or so until the story and characters begin to emerge, but those who persevere will be rewarded with exciting and moving stories centered on eternal themes that endure and are as relevant today as they were when written. People often forget or are not aware that Dickens wrote for the common people and not intellectual highbrows. His writing is beautiful, funny, tragic, and romantic, and no more difficult to read than anything else once you get into the flow. One thing I must say, though is that I HATE the footnotes in this Penguin edition, they are unbelievably distracting and almost universally unnecessary.
Rating:
Summary: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Review: An edifying tale of the legal profession's self-serving instinct, of the self-absorption of hygienically-challenged do-gooders, and the folly of relying on either. Oh, there's more to it than that, but I don't want to spoil it for you.
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