Bleak House by Charles Dickens

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


This was the ninth novel by Dickens, Charles that I’ve completed, and I have to admit I’m completely baffled about why I’ve read so many things good about this one. Note that I haven’t seen the production with Gillian Anderson; I’ve only read the book. Maybe the series is amazing–I could see someone piecing together something interesting out of this. But as it stands, this is a long, dry, depressing book that is pretty much devoid of any pleasures. It seems that Dickens decided that the way to convince people that the legal system was an interminable torture was to interminably torture his readers. I just felt so dispirited when I finished it–and like I’d gotten nothing else out of it.

I’ve not loved all of Dickens’ books I’ve read all the way through–Little Dorrit and Martin Chuzzlewit come to mind–but I’ve felt happy I stuck with them through the end. Not in this case. This one includes an omniscient narrator who won’t say anything in a couple of words that could be said in five lines, a first person narrator who we’re supposed to believe sees herself as some kind of angel but who Dickens uses to convey his scornful judgements in circuitous and disingenuous ways, various random deaths of no apparent cause except to serve the story, and one death that is explained–by a gratuitous case of spontaneous combustion. I could go on and on.

There are so many Dickens books out there, and they really do fundamentally differ in so many ways. I would definitely recommend David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and several others before this one.



View all my reviews