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  • Many consider this to be Dickens best, and though I definitely haven't read enough of his works to put a superlative on this book, it was quite good. The book presents an excellent cross-section of societal Victorian characters, from the high to the low to the middle. These caricatures are what ma ... Continue

    Many consider this to be Dickens best, and though I definitely haven't read enough of his works to put a superlative on this book, it was quite good. The book presents an excellent cross-section of societal Victorian characters, from the high to the low to the middle. These caricatures are what makes the work great more so than the story itself. Though I would never recommend Bleak House as a first Dickens book for anyone to read, it is excellent for anyone who has previously tasted, and enjoyed, his style.

    

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• ― Bossdog said on Aug 1, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • I hated Esther Summerson. She was a horrible narrator. Completely ruined my enjoyment of this novel which, otherwise, had interesting characterizations and the extraordinary invention of the Circumlocution office.

    

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• ― guaddess said on May 30, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

With an Introduction and Notes by Doreen Roberts, University of Kent at CanterburyBleak House is one of Dicken's finest achievements, establishing his reputation as a serious and mature novelist, as well as a brilliant comic writer. It is at once a complex mystery story that fully engages the reader in the work of detection, and an unforgettable indictment of an indifferent society. Its representations of a great city's underworld, and of the law's corruption and delay, draw upon the author's personal knowledge and experience. But it is his symbolic art that projects these things in a vision that embraces black comedy, cosmic farce, and tragic ruin.In a unique creative experiment, Dickens divides the narrative between his heroine, Esther Summerson, who is psychologically interesting in her own right, and an unnamed narrator whose perspective both complements and challenges hers.

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