Review: "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens

One of the resolutions I had for myself once I turned 30 was to read more books written and published before 1900. For reasons that are purely arbitrary, I was only interested in modern books and by entering a new decade of life, I felt like I needed a change. One book that was on top of that list of books written in a different century than when I was born was Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. After hearing it referenced in a few novels and short stories I liked, and it not being one of Dickens’ widely read novels (especially when compared to novels like A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations), it was a book I was dying to read once I turned 30. The experience was very much what I expected. Sometimes I was confused and had to look things up, others times I was riveted and a little too proud once I finally understood something. I won’t get too deep into this plot because of its status in world literature, with many of its more broad pints recognizable to hardcore bibliophiles, so I will focus more on what I liked and did not like. Even though it is 165 years old, the overall structure and the meaning behind it is relevant and true. Dickens presents society as a machine with many working parts of varying degrees of importance and status that somehow rely on one another to keep society moving forward. But that does not mean some of these parts can’t go forgotten, like the doomed young boy Jo, or become nefarious in their intentions, like Mr. Tulkinghorn and Mr. Vholes, both manipulative lawyers. Towards the end a lot of plotlines are wrapped up a little too quickly, and some of those within the orbit of Esther Summerson not getting what they deserve, but through that we really get a sense of Dickens’ ambivalence toward society’s infallibility, where good and bad things happen to good and bad people indiscriminately. It ends on a powerful image of young children with full lives ahead of them, filled with hope despite going forth in an indifferent world. While I feel I did not grasp a large portion of this 989-page book, I’m glad I picked it up and was at least partially enriched by it. 

Rating: 4/5