Bleak House - Charles Dickens
Originally published 1796.
Dickens needs to be read at a particular pace, but when I get on the right wavelength I love his writing. This book opens with a section over a page long which just describes the London fog, and yet it is a beautifully written section that even manages to say something about the various locations and characters that the fog rolls through.
Bleak House is a great mix of comedy, tragedy, light romance and biting satire, as indeed many of Dickens' best works are. This particular novel focuses on a never-ending court case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, to which all of our main characters are linked in some way. A mysterious figure known only as 'Nemo' is found dead, and something about his handwriting seems to link him to the cold and distant Lady Dedlock. Meanwhile, Esther Summerson, a young woman of uncertain parentage, navigates her new life as ward of and housekeeper to John Jarndyce, as well as perhaps something more.
The cast of characters is sprawling (sometimes a little too sprawling) and yet each plays their role, from the slightly pathetic lovelorn character of Mr Guppy to the annoying 'childlike' Mr Skimpole, from the coarse but effective detective Mr Bucket to the shrivelled moneylender Grandfather Smallweed. And in the background, the ever-lurking figure of the lawyer, Mr Tulkinghorn.
Slightly overlong (as Dickens can be) but so beautifully written.
Well worth the time.
Completed 29 November 2023.
Previously completed 16 June 2017.
(2017 List)
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