Bleak House (Paperback)

Bleak House is a giant book by any measure, physical or literary, triumphantly covering so much ground that it successfully paints a multi-faceted, multi-layered portrait of the whole culture and society of the Victorian Age in Britain. Bleak House is a savage satire upon the class system, the law, politics, and public morality. At the same time it is a wonderful crime novel of murder and detection, a love story, a comedy, and a piece of high Victorian melodrama. Yes, Bleak House is all these things and more.

In addition, the novel also displays Dickens' artistry as a writer of prose to the full. The famous first chapter alone - which consists almost entirely of a magnificent description of a foggy day in November - is a masterpiece of English prose. From there onwards the standard of writing never slips.

Dickens' is justly famous for the wonderful casts of characters he assembled for his novels and here again, Bleak House doesn't disappoint. It boasts a vast and interesting array of characters, especially Mr Jarndyce, Esther Summerson (the partial narrator and heroine of the book), Jo the crossing sweeper whose story will break your heart, the villainous Mr Tulkington, and the detective Inspector Bucket, one of the first detectives to appear in fiction.

I rate Bleak House as Dickens' most mature, supreme achievement as a writer. The satire is biting. The moral indignation at the injustices of the world is brave and honest. As a whole experience, no reader can afford not to read classics like Bleak House at least once. If you do miss out, you're only letting the finest things in life (reading life anyway) pass you by.

'Bleak House' has a huge cast of characters and its plot is as extensive and complex as the London Underground system. It also employs a double narrative - one of the characters, Esther, acts as narrator and comments on the personal and emotional world of its characters, while an unnamed, third person narrator comments on the social and economic ills of the era. We get, therefore, a paralleling of the individual and the social. The Court of Chancery and the aristocracy are presented as a social fog - deadening, confusing, misleading, a blight on the world. Dynamism comes from the individual's emotions, hopes and fears.

While the impersonal narrator writes in the present tense and comments ironically on corruption, greed, abuses of power, and the plethora of social ills Dickens exposes and satirises in this work, Esther's account is written in the past tense, a diary reflecting on her life with optimism and hope. Dickens thus gives his reader a sense of the triumph of the individual - a comparatively lowly young woman - over the dead hand of an archaic, oppressive social system.

Esther is an orphan who seeks to discover her real identity and learn who she is - a major theme in the book is the abdication of parental and familial responsibility. She feels a sense of purpose in life - unlike the philanthropists Dickens exposes, who rush around interfering in the lives of the poor and destitute, oblivious to the unhappiness and misery of their own families. Esther genuinely cares about others - it is no fashionable pretence. Dickens emphasises the social nature of life - no one is alone or apart from society, all its peoples and institutions are interconnected. 'Bleak House', therefore, becomes a metaphor for the complexities of life and society.

In terms of the sophistication and complexity of its plot and style, 'Bleak House' can be seen as Dickens masterpiece - though less well known than other works. It is written in an astonishingly visual style - from the opening fog, Dickens doesn't obscure his world, he lays it open as moving tableaux. At times the writing can be a trifle dense and overly precise for modern tastes, but this is a master of language at work. Dickens draws his characters with deceptive ease. He ruthlessly exposes their flaws and foibles, yet reserves a tender affection for them.

It's a brilliantly written, brilliantly worked, vast world of a novel. Complex - no idle read this, you will need to concentrate to remember who the many characters are and what they are up to. A very visual, very socially concerned, very dynamic book, if you can get into Dickens's style it's likely that this will be one you'll want to read again. Indeed, it may be a book you have to read twice to appreciate its depth. Now revitalised by an epic BBC production, a viewing of the novel as television drama may be a stimulus for many to read the book. It is an extraordinary read and one to be commended to anyone with a love of language or fascination with Victoriana … or who simply loves a great tale, told by a master.

Firstly there are several social evils of Dickens' time, evils which he either helped to expose or whose exposure by others he thought it prudent to incorporate. The aim of lawyers to make business for themselves he dramatized in the case Jarndyce v Jarndyce. The misguided missionary zeal of self-appointed philanthropists who set their vision on far away places, peoples, and cultures while ignoring the needs of the family and the situation at home is personified especially in Mrs Jellyby and Mr Chadband.

Secondly, there is the narrative format: the narrative is shared between one of the principal characters, Esther Summerson, writing in the past tense, and an anonymous narrator who writes in the present tense. The latter narrative contains some of the best imagery and most powerful prose to be found in Dickens' works. The novel's famous opening, depicting a London fog, is an example of this.

Thirdly, there is the presence of a detective, Mr Detective Bucket. Detective fiction, so large a section in book shops nowadays, was unknown in Dickens' time. He foreshadowed most of its elements in "Bleak House", although his incurable reliance on coincidence and rudimentary grasp of psychology militates against the creation of genuine suspense.

Finally, I identify the novel's structure as one of its special features. "It is the best constructed of all his books," wrote G K Chesterton.

On every page there is the stamp of genius, I believe, but I also believe that the novel has many flaws. Once the main plot lines are established, the pace slows down excessively, part way through, and a parade of tiresome characters like Harold Skimpole are allowed to occupy whole chapters at a time. There are mawkish deathbed scenes. Character drawing is not always successful. The best-drawn are the eccentrics or those who have some physical attribute or mannerism that Dickens can exaggerate.

"Bleak House" is the Dickens novel I have re-read most often. At all ages I have found it absorbing. In recent times it has received great advocacy by the issue of a complete reading of it - all 39 hours - by Hugh Dickson. The possessor of a pleasant natural voice, suggesting a tenor if he were to sing, Hugh Dickson contrives to adopt and project the voices of the more than 60 characters that people this novel. A masterly achievement.