Product Description

Bleak House, Dickens's most daring experiment in the narration of a complex plot, challenges the reader to make connections - -between the fashionable and the outcast, the beautiful and the ugly, the powerful and the victims. Nowhere in Dickens's later novels is his attack on an uncaring society more imaginatively embodied, but nowhere either is the mixture of comedy and angry satire more deftly managed. Bleak House defies a single description. It is a mystery story, in which Esther Summerson discovers the truth about her birth and her unknown mother's tragic life. It is a murder story, which comes to a climax in a thrilling chase, led by one of the earliest detectives in English fiction, Inspector Bucket. And it is a fable about redemption, in which a bleak house is transformed by the resilience of human love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #962 in Books
• Published on: 1993-12-07
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 800 pages

Synopsis
With an Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, University of Kent at Canterbury and illustrations by Hablot K. Browne (Phiz), "Bleak House" is one of Dickens' finest achievements, establishing his reputation as a serious and mature novelist, as well as a brilliant comic writer. It is at once a complex mystery story that fully engages the reader in the work of detection, and an unforgettable indictment of an indifferent society. Its representations of a great city's underworld, and of the law's corruption and delay, draw upon the author's personal knowledge and experience. But it is his symbolic art that projects these things in a vision that embraces black comedy, cosmic farce, and tragic ruin. In a unique creative experiment, Dickens divides the narrative between his heroine, Esther Summerson, who is psychologically interesting in her own right, and an unnamed narrator whose perspective both complements and challenges hers.

About the Author
Stephen Gill is Reader in English Literature at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor at Lincoln College.

Customer Reviews

Because it's always good to have a dissenting view
I've been a big fan of Dickens since reading David Copperfield about six years ago. Bleak House, which was the immediate follow-up to Copperfield, is not one of his best books.
Firstly, what happened to Dickens sense of humour, which went AWOL in Bleak House? There are some half-hearted attempts at comedy but they mostly fall flat. The warmth present in the best passages of Copperfield is also missing, though Dickens' notorious sentimentality is rampant.
Half of the book is narrated by Esther, who is more given to protestations of humility than Uriah Heep himself, except we are supposed to accept Esther as sincere, unlike the villanous Heep. Dickens' portrayal of young maidenhood has often been lampooned, and Esther is possibly the nadir, the worst of the worst. The part that is not narrated by Esther is told in the present tense, for some reason, and the prose is very stilted, and unnatural.
There are a few mildly interesting minor characters in the book, such as Harold Skimpole, but none of the main characters are more than cardboard cutouts. The overall impression I got from this book was that Dickens' heart wasn't in it in the same way as in Copperfield or Great Expectations. The current critical vogue this book enjoys is probably down to its dealing with BIG SOCIAL ISSUES, and the fact that it is more neatly plotted than other Dickens novels, but the casual reader should not introduce himself to Dickens via this plodding and uninvolving work, it could put you off Dickens for life. Check out David Copperfield or Great Expectations instead.

unbeatable
pretty unbeatable, touching, heart breaking, wickedly funny and extremely evocative of Dicken's London...if you just read one classic novel then make it this one. A masterpiece

One of the six truly great Dickens novels
Superb panorama of Victorian life, exposing the state, the legal system, the poverty of riches and the hypcrisy of liberalism (Horace Skimpole). Inspiring - the TV series brought it home to millions of people that Dickens really is our finest novelist.