Bleak House
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Bleak House
Charles Dickens
Literature
Aug 7, 2018
Although it lacks the affectionate warmth of David Copperfield and the narrative unity of Great Expectations, Bleak House is considered by many critics to be its author’s greatest achievement. Unlike those other two novels, which, of course, have their own ardent champions, Bleak House is not steeped in childhood or focused on the unfolding of a childhood’s layers of hopes and sorrows in later life; it is a novel of adulthood, a nuanced exploration of social mores, economic and legal entanglement, romantic passion, mature love, and murderous envy. Innovative in its structure, it is told in two distinct and alternating voices. This capacious book seems to be a compendium of everything its author had learned about inventing characters and telling stories. It weaves several strands of popular (or soon to be popular) fiction—social satire, romance, sentimental education, the novel of sensation, and the detective story—into a single vast tapestry of reading that is surprising, intellectually compelling, and wholly satisfying.
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Jun 25, 2019
Dickens shows us the best and the worst of humankind
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May 23, 2020
I plan to reread this someday. It is so powerful.
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