Bleak House

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: David Case

Length: 39 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

Published in 1853, Bleak House is one of Dickens' most mature and ambitious novels. From London's slums to the Court of Chancery, where the endless case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce devours the future of several generations, the author's canvas of Victorian society vividly conveys an indictment of legal corruption, a riveting tale of detection, and a compelling emotional drama.

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(P)2006 Tantor Media Inc.

Critic reviews

"Vigorous satire....[with] a host of interesting minor characters." (The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature.)

A few blips.

Any additional comments?

Overall very good. There are a few times when the recording loops back and repeats a minute or two. Once (chap 29), it didn't continue after the repeat, but skipped ahead in the middle of an important spot.

Frustrating

If you could sum up Bleak House in three words, what would they be?

Cunningly woven tale

What did you like best about this story?

Charles Dickens has a delightful and subtle wit. I find I need to listen closely to understand just what he means, but it's well worth the effort. It was worth the work to follow the characters set up in their individual lives and then watch as Dickens drew them together. I felt I had "aha!" moments when I remembered where I heard a character's name from an earlier chapter.

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of David Case?

I am not familiar enough with narrators to make a suggestion, but anyone else could have been better. I realize there are LOTS of characters, but Mr. Case often started reading a character in one voice and then switched to another character's voice while in midstream. It often made an intricate story very confusing.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Nope.

Classic Dickens

The last half of the story really picked up and saved this from being just a longwinded jumble of characters. It starts out introducing several of them in quick succession and I was drowning in a sea of names. I had a very hard time keeping them all separate and understanding the very complicated web of interaction among them. As the story went along, the minor characters fell away and I was able to identify the main players but it took a long time for that to happen. The plot and sub-plots are extremely complex and I must admit I needed help from Wikipedia to get me through. If you are better than I at listening closely you may have a better understanding of how it's all going but I was completely lost. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book, I did. Just following along with the characters is an enjoyable ride but since I listen while I run or drive, I can't focus my attention close enough to capture all the fabulous nuances that Dickens has hidden in this one.

David Case was OK. There was some breathing, smacking and swallowing but not as bad as I have heard from other narrators. He did a very good job with the different voices especially the women's' voices considering his voice is rather deep. He did not make them all out to be ditzy or snobby sounding. At first I thought I'd have liked it to have been narrated by a woman but by the half way point, I had adjusted to it.

Overall, this was not my favorite Dickens novel but it wasn't terrible. A little too political for my taste but it was very poignant for it's time. If you have the time, give it a try.

Bravo!

In my estimation, Charles Dickens' finest! Humor, character description, vocabulary - all simply sensational! David Case is fabulous as the reader. I will cherish this book for all of my life!

Excellent reading of a classic novel

I have to give full marks to David Case for the excellent job he does as narrator of Bleak House. He manages to create believable distinctive voices for many characters of all classes and both sexes, and this made the novel an excellent listen. My only reservation is with Dickens himself, who is at his best when writing satire but who really lays it on thick when he delves into sentimentality. Dickens' characters tend to be one-dimensional, which works fine when he is satirizing their quirks and bad habits, such as the ludicrous Mr. Chadband, whose manner of delivering sermons is to ask absurd rhetorical questions over and over and then refute them. Yet Dickens' sentimentality doesn't really spoil how entertaining the book is in the final analysis, and I suspect the fact that Dickens is a little obvious and heavy-handed in his moralizing is also why he remains a very popular writer to this day.

play at 120% speed

don't choose this version unless you like David Case's voice -- and even if you do, play it at 120% speed. I believe this recording was made in the 90s, and the quality is not as fine as more recent audiobooks. Nevertheless, I prefer it to other versions. The story is intricate and captivating -- pay attention to all the details, since there is no purely superfluous storyline in the book; it is all woven together neatly in the end. The exchange of narrators takes a page from Collins' The Moonstone, and the element of mystery takes some very surprising turns.

Wrong type of narration

I ordered this audio book on the basis of the reviews about the wonderful narration. I couldn't disagree more. Perhaps this story lends itself to a dramatization. Even so, for me the narrator's tired, pinched, snobby voice made Bleak House impossible to listen to.

Like "Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce," it goes on and on

This is generally considered one of Dickens's best works, though it's not the most widely read or frequently filmed, because it's also one of his longest works and has a ton of subplots. At the center of Bleak House is the case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, which has been running through the Chancery Court for so long that it's become a self-perpetuating monster that none of its participants really understands:


"Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless."


The main character is Esther Summerson, a ward of John Jarndyce. Besides Esther, Mr. Jarndyce takes in two other wards who have "inherited" the suit, Ada and Richard.

The novel runs through several different plot threads and involves dozens of characters. The most memorable, besides Esther, are the crusty, conservative Baronet Sir Leicester Dedlock and his much younger wife Lady Honoraria Dedlock, Sir Leicester's sinister lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn, Harold Skimpole, a manipulative mooch, and of course, the Lord Chancellor "Keep away from flames" Krook.

This was one of Dickens's "social criticism" novels. While he was mostly ripping into the Chancery Court, he involves a cast of colorful characters illuminating the entire spectrum of human behavior, from the despicable and greedy to the selfless and charitable to the silly to the pathetic. This book ups the Dickensian quota for tragic tear-jerking deaths, administers the expected just comeuppance for evil-doers, and of course, properly marries off the heroine in the end. There is a secret illegitimate child, a murder mystery, and plenty of humor and pathos.

That said... ye gads was this book long! Bleak House is one of those novels that earned Dickens his reputation for being very, very wordy and writing books that would be considered bloated and full of filler by modern standards. Usually I can listen to really long audiobooks and follow along for the duration. Someday I will have to have another go at this book and actually read it as opposed to half-listening to it, but it just wasn't my favorite Dickens.

It's Dickens, so of course the filler is still very good, but I missed the comedy and the (relative) conciseness of his other novels. Plus, Dickens really doesn't write fully fleshed out women, so Esther is your typical woman-on-a-pedestal, always modest, always demure, always perfect and angelic.

Totally worth it if you like Dickens and/or long audiobooks, but there are a LOT of subplots and minor characters.

David Case is not my favorite narrator - I think I would probably go with the Simon Vance version. He read the book well enough, but his voice creaked too much for some of the characters for my liking, and I could hear him swallowing or licking his lips often enough to be a little distracting. (Can't blame him, considering how LONG this book is, but still.)

Wonderful and Engaging

Where does Bleak House rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

One of the best.

What did you like best about this story?

Very long but it drew the reader in with wit and optimism and kept the pace. A fantastic view of the English legal system at the time.

What does David Case bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He accentuates all the characters uniquely.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No.

Classic Dickens, with a boatload of characters

This novel is basically Dickens' rant at the British legal system of his time. Still, Dickens is a master of storytelling, so it's an entertaining rant. I work at a law firm, so I was probably a little more interested in the legal aspect of the book than most readers would be. There are a ton of characters -- after a while, you start getting confused -- but only a few of them are pivotal; most are used allegorically to exaggerate and illuminate faults (the woman so intent on saving Africa she neglects her own home, for one) and in the end evil is met with punishment and good is met with reward. It's a long one, so be prepared, and it doesn't have the gravitas of Tale of Two Cities, but it's an interesting book that is classic Dickens.