Bleak House by Charles Dickens
In Bleak House by Charles Dickens, Dickens gives the readers a look at English society that hangs on the trellis of a never-ending lawsuit named Jarndyce and Jarndyce, one which has spanned more than one generation of Jarndyces and resulted in the death of one member and the ruination of more. It gets ever more complicated and less likely to be concluded as time goes on, and it's not the only such suit going on in the Court of Chancery. Within the sweep of people Jarndyce and Jarndyce affects, Dickens shows the family, their ward, their friends, the parasites who try to live off them, the people they try to help, etc... and also a noble family named the Dedlocks, who have their own connection that will eventually become clear as the story goes on. Bleak House mainly concerns John Jarndyce's ward, Esther Summerson: the secrets of her family (this is Dickens, after all) and her attempts to build a good life for herself and the people she cares for, something that becomes harder as her friend Richard becomes ever more obsessed with Jarndyce and Jarndyce and certain that it'll be concluded soon and make him rich, beliefs that warp his life, endanger Esther's beloved Ada, and estrange him from John Jarndyce.
Bleak House is a big book and verbose--more verbose than the modern reader is accustomed to--but it's also very witty, with some genuine laugh out loud moments, though it can be dark at times, especially since Dickens continues his tendency of showing the terrible lives the poor had to live. (Poor, poor Jo....) Its descriptions of people and places are very sensual and occasionally surprising. A lot of people consider Bleak House one of the best English language novels ever for good reason. It has a large, rich cast of characters, many of whom you really come to care about, some of whom you really hope get their comeuppance. Some reviewers at Goodreads felt that Esther is too much of a Goody Two Shoes but I liked her, especially in her biting and funny observations of people who deserve it, such as Mr. Skimpole, the toxic "philanthropists" she meets, and Mr. Turvydrop.
That said, Bleak House can sometimes sprawl too much, and for me the pile of coincidences and how everybody is connected started to seem a bit too much in its closing stretch.
I recommend it, but the modern reader will need patience at times.
But before this edition of the book gets us to Bleak House itself, it gives us some selections from Vladimir Nabakov's lectures on the novel, and on the first page of that Nabakov briefly puts down Jane Austen as a girly writer to further burnish the manly and thus more accessible Dickens. (His lectures also covered Austen's Mansfield Park.):
We are now ready to tackle Dickens. We are now ready to embrace Dickens. We are now ready to bask in Dickens. In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a certain effort to join the ladies in the drawing room. In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port.
Because there's no better way to start to a new book than with an unexpected rage-inducing quote about an entirely different author and her work.
By the way, I once wrote a satiric Smallville fic in response to the twee, precious, and sing-songy style Stephen King and Peter Straub's Black House sometimes took on, a style they claimed was inspired by Bleak House. It doesn't come close and is instead witless and annoying instead of rich and often wry as Bleak House is, showing why Charles Dickens is Charles Dickens while they are not. But a lot of people got a few good laughs out of my fic "Black Pond," so I guess something good came of it.
Bleak House is a big book and verbose--more verbose than the modern reader is accustomed to--but it's also very witty, with some genuine laugh out loud moments, though it can be dark at times, especially since Dickens continues his tendency of showing the terrible lives the poor had to live. (Poor, poor Jo....) Its descriptions of people and places are very sensual and occasionally surprising. A lot of people consider Bleak House one of the best English language novels ever for good reason. It has a large, rich cast of characters, many of whom you really come to care about, some of whom you really hope get their comeuppance. Some reviewers at Goodreads felt that Esther is too much of a Goody Two Shoes but I liked her, especially in her biting and funny observations of people who deserve it, such as Mr. Skimpole, the toxic "philanthropists" she meets, and Mr. Turvydrop.
That said, Bleak House can sometimes sprawl too much, and for me the pile of coincidences and how everybody is connected started to seem a bit too much in its closing stretch.
I recommend it, but the modern reader will need patience at times.
But before this edition of the book gets us to Bleak House itself, it gives us some selections from Vladimir Nabakov's lectures on the novel, and on the first page of that Nabakov briefly puts down Jane Austen as a girly writer to further burnish the manly and thus more accessible Dickens. (His lectures also covered Austen's Mansfield Park.):
We are now ready to tackle Dickens. We are now ready to embrace Dickens. We are now ready to bask in Dickens. In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a certain effort to join the ladies in the drawing room. In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port.
Because there's no better way to start to a new book than with an unexpected rage-inducing quote about an entirely different author and her work.
By the way, I once wrote a satiric Smallville fic in response to the twee, precious, and sing-songy style Stephen King and Peter Straub's Black House sometimes took on, a style they claimed was inspired by Bleak House. It doesn't come close and is instead witless and annoying instead of rich and often wry as Bleak House is, showing why Charles Dickens is Charles Dickens while they are not. But a lot of people got a few good laughs out of my fic "Black Pond," so I guess something good came of it.