OK… I’ve finished the first tranche, Chapters 1-4.
Thoughts so far: the first two chapters, narrated anonymously in the present, are very good, with a nice wry (if not downright sarcastic) demolition of the chancery process. I really like these chapters.
Then chapter 3 arrives and we are introduced to a new narrator, Esther. Esther is convinced she is a truly terrible human being, something she lets us know by telling us in detail of every single occasion in her entire life that someone has told her how good, kind, angelic, beautiful and downright perfect she is, the rascals.
If this is Dickens playing games – that we are intended to see that Esther is an irritatingly manipulative, irrititatingly longwinded, irritatingly selfserving, irritating flibbertigibbet – then OK. He’s done a very good job. I was duly irritated and will keep a watchful eye on Little Miss Hypocrite for the rest of the book to see her exposed to public shame and ridicule.[1]
More seriously, there’s a lot to enjoy in chapters 3 and 4: the scathing description of the puritan inhumanity of Dear ‘Aunt’ Barbaric; the chaotic inhumanity of Mrs African Charity towards her own family; the genteel poverty of Old Mrs Litigant and so on. This is good, powerful writing.
And yes, I do know Esther is a damaged human being after the horror of her upbringing – that comes across well. But, goodness, if she’s this irritating as a narrator after only two chapters, what will she be like after 850 pages?[2]
Perhaps we should read Bleak House like many people read War and Peace[3]: read only the bits by Sarky Anonymous Narrator?
[1] Which she won’t be.
[2] As previous voyages on the Good Shop Bleak House foundered about Chapter 12, mainly because of Iceberg Esther, I do have a reasonable idea about the answer to this one.
[3] I.e. Instead of reading the interminable sentimental nonsense about inconsequential adolescent crushes among minor Russian nobility, concentrate on the fascinating discussion of the events of the 1812 invasion of Russia from the perspective of some of the protagonists. [4]
[4] Though, of course, neither War nor Peace fans ever read the 50 pages on the Meaning of History at the end.