Date Finished: 12/08/2011
My Rating: 3/5
Wow. 52 days to get through this one, although I do partly blame the dog. No, really. Oh, and my student card expiring, so bus journeys are more expensive meaning that I have driven to work more than normal, thereby forsaking some precious reading time. Also, it is 900+ pages long. Anyway, enough preamble (and weak excuses), and on with the review.
I am not sure if I quite feel that I am worthy of reviewing a Dickens book. What Bleak House really demonstrates is just how intelligent and well read Charles Dickens was. It is littered with references to Shakespeare, the Bible, old folk tales and songs. Bleak House is definitely a 2 bookmark book... one for the novel itself and one for the notes to find out what was being referred to, or what had happened in Dickens' life that had influenced a part of the story. It is probably not necessary to read all the notes, but I rather enjoyed flicking to the back of the book. I feel slightly more intelligent and educated for it!
Bleak House is written in two distinct styles. The first few chapters I found hard to get through (both times that I have read the book, as I read it in my first Big Read attempt). They require a lot of concentration to keep a drift of what is going on, and the book returns to this narrative style regularly. Interspersed with this however, is Esther's narrative, which has a lovely flow to it, and is written from the perspective of the unassuming, warm, kind and just thoroughly nice Esther Summerson.
The two different narratives tell a complicated story. It is cleverly written, with the right amount of characters to give it depth and colour, but not so many that you forget who everybody is. You have to concentrate throughout the book to make the links between different parts of the story, but you are led into the right conclusions at the right time by Dickens. Bleak House is a book of mystery, murder, guilt, remorse, and redemption. And there is a lot of good. Good people doing good things.
So, who should read this book? Well, it requires some commitment to get through, but if you're a big reader, I don't think you'd be disappointed. And I promise it gets easier from Chapter 3 onwards!
Next Book: Ulysses, James Joyce
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