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Osian

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Another Country

by James Baldwin

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Oct 22, 2025 03:34PM

Osian rated a book really liked it

Bleak House

by Charles Dickens

bookshelves: novels, currently-reading

Reading for the 3rd time

read in July 2024

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Osian said: " Fabulous! One of the most epic, sweeping, ENORMOUS books I've ever read, and one I enjoyed massively.

Dickens is the quintessential Victorian author. He has it all - the gothic, the romantic, the social criticism, breathtaking descriptions - and writ Fabulous! One of the most epic, sweeping, ENORMOUS books I've ever read, and one I enjoyed massively.

Dickens is the quintessential Victorian author. He has it all - the gothic, the romantic, the social criticism, breathtaking descriptions - and writes it all with the utmost fluidity and confidence. And what is more impressive yet is the difference between his third person narration and Esther's narration. The two completely different perspectives allow for so much variety, in both plot and style.

On the topic of plot... Bleak House is paced magnificently and I really wish I could have been there for its serialisation! Not once did I find a volume of the novel uninteresting as each one of the 67 chapters develops plot or character meaningfully. The gradual introduction of more and more characters always kept me interested and meant that new favourites were cropping up all the time - at first, Mr Tulkinghorn and Miss Flite, then Mr Smallweed, George, Mr Bucket, Mr Vholes... there are so many great plotlines to get invested in. As is the case with lengthy encyclopedic novels like this, some plotlines and characters appealed to me more than others (I can't say I got that excited whenever the focus shifted onto Leicester and Volumnia Dedlock, for example) but this hardly detracted from the novel on the whole.

Dickens' satire is the driving core of the novel, however. The brutal portayals of Jenny, Liz and their husbands' home life to the absolute nadir of London's poor at Tom-All-Alone's give such powerful impressions of England's least fortunate, and the portrayal of nobility in decay through the Dedlocks works as a brilliant juxtaposition. Mrs Jellyby and her entourage's misguided philanthropy, Mr Skimpole's thinly veiled selfishness, Richard's slow corruption and deterioration by Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the novel's central plot-driving court case and representation of the stagnant, putrid state of Dickens' Britain. It is all so bloody brilliant.

Though not quite flawless, at least not on a first read, I loved this book and absolutely want to delve further into Dickens. i'm thinking A Tale of Two Cities next - something completely different! ...more "

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— Jul 17, 2024 08:08AM

Oct 21, 2025 02:12AM · see review