Bleak House

Bleak House

by Charles Dickens

I have a confession to make: it took me 3 tries to get through this book. The first try was in college, the second was about 3 years ago. (In my defense, it is well over 800 pages.) Then I watched the wonderful BBC/Masterpiece Theater adaptation of it on TV last year and recently decided to give it another try. I must admit that I enjoyed the book much, much more after having seen the miniseries! How unusual is that? I think that having a sense of where the story was headed helped me to sort through the vast cast of characters and Dickens' sometimes circuitous writing and to really appreciate the brilliance of this book. It really is wonderful after all!

It is the story of a vast and unwieldy lawsuit and of generations of people that are drawn into its treacherous grasp. In the usual Dickens fashion there are tons of fabulous characters and enough separate storylines to comprise at least a dozen novels, so it's hard to post much of a plot summary here.

I highly recommend this book and the miniseries as well. The miniseries is very true to the novel, yet is not able to include a lot of the side characters or stories, so reading the book after watching the series is certainly not redundant. I also think that Esther is one of the most charming narrators in literature and the book is worth reading simply to hear the story in her voice.