A review by steve_sanders
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
4.0
This is a tough one for star rankings. At its best, Bleak House stands among Dickens’ finest (and thus is he greatest fiction ever written). But at times it becomes too much of a good thing. You could easily cut two hundred pages. In the book’s first half especially, there is the sense of Dickens spinning his wheels and delaying inevitable plot developments.
But once the threads start to come together the book really is a thing of beauty, a potent depiction of the ways in which tragedy often occurs not just in spite of human decency, but because of it. And only Shakespeare can rival Dickens combination of gorgeous sentences and gripping narrative.
But once the threads start to come together the book really is a thing of beauty, a potent depiction of the ways in which tragedy often occurs not just in spite of human decency, but because of it. And only Shakespeare can rival Dickens combination of gorgeous sentences and gripping narrative.