Advantages: Brilliant, engrossing read Disadvantages: Approach with patience ready for the slow sections!
From the outside, BleakHouse is nothing if not a daunting prospect - my copy was over 800 pages of dusty mid-1800s prose. Even with the benefit of having watched the TV series and so beginning with a reasonable knowledge of plot and characters, I was still expecting the read to be more a trudge than a thrill ride. It caught me by surprise, therefore, how good this book turned out to be.
To begin with, the characterisation was expectional - sympathetic characters such as Esther and Ada, coupled with comedic characters such as Miss Flite and a truly despicable pantomime villian in Mr Tulkinghorn. Along with these traditional character types, Dickens also includes some more complex individuals. Lady Dedlock, the bored noblewoman with a chequered history, is one of my favourite female characters in any book I've read.
Having introduced ...
Advantages: It does eventually finish !!! Disadvantages: Long & complicated, dull, hard to follow, umpteen miserable characters, lots !!!
I studied CharlesDickens' 'BleakHouse' at school for my 'A'-level English Literature & it was so awful that I have never read another Dickens novel !! It is a HUGE book, but not one that justifies its hundreds of pages, as the story is not advanced in an entertaining way, but the whole book is full of lengthy description & is really dull & boring. There are so many characters in this book that we had to make notes on them, just so we could try to follow the story. It is all so complicated, but nothing seems to be achieved. Dickens' novels may have been the soap operas of their day, but this novel is a nightmare & I would only recommend it to people with a lot of time on their hands, who I vehemently dislike ! Not recommended in the slightest. ...
Advantages: Cast and performances; authentic costumes, makeup, sets; introductory music; brisk pacing. Disadvantages: Anderson too frosty; transitional rapid cuts and swooshing sounds; heavy on the rumbling music.
of the British legal system. Drawing heavily on his experience working as a solicitor's clerk, Mr Dickens saved his sharpest barbs for the court lawyers who seemed to enjoy wasting everyone's time and money with habitual and pernicious procrastination.
At the heart of 'BleakHouse' is the infamous case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which a large fortune remains contested by many, as several different wills and fragments of wills have surfaced on the patriarch's death. The lawyers to all concerned parties (which include most of the story's principals) can never seem to agree on anything anymore, not even the meaning of the case. The especial notoriety of the Jarndyce suit lies in its interminable life in the courts, having dragged on for several generations now. Seen by some as a curse, Jarndyce and Jarndyce has caused lives to be ruined, brought ...
