Bleak House

By: Charles Dickens

Narrated by: Peter Batchelor

Held to be Dickens' finest novel, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon. Memorable characters include the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn, the friendly, but depressive John Jarndyce, and the childish and disingenuous Harold Skimpole, as well as the likeable but imprudent Richard Carstone. A suspenseful tale about the injustices of the 19th-century English legal system. This novel set the standard for modern day legal thrillers.

Public Domain (P)2013 Trout Lake Media

Perhaps better in print than on audio

Many times I've heard this work described as Dickens' masterpiece, so I'd hoped to find it more engaging than I did. I don't think the expansiveness of the novel alone is the problem, as I've listened to equally complex works and reveled in them. With Bleak House, however, the first half is such slow going that it's hard to find the main stream of the plot for all the interminable eddies, and the number of extraneous characters only serves to muddy the waters. By the mid-point of the recording, I'd come to think of it as "six hundred characters in search of a novel." But as other reviewers note, inherent difficulty of the novel isn't helped by the narrator, who reads at such a quick pace that many of the lengthier passages -- there are a lot of them of course -- dissolve into a rambling blur. Nor can he do justice to the sheer number of character voices that the narrative imposes on him. I strongly suspect that Bleak House is best served by its original medium.

I can still appreciate why the book enjoys such a strong reputation. I don't know many other works that deal so intensely and dynamically with the intersections of class in Victorian society. It is astonishing in that respect.

Better example of Dickens' art than many others better known...

This is only my third Audible book and while Mr Batchelor has a fine voice his personalizing of the characters was not an addition to the story. Many times it actually detracted fro the story. His voice of Messieurs Smallweed and Vols verged on the annoying and while both characters are annoying I think Mr Dickens words aline served the purpose. I will not avoid books read by Mr Batchelor but I won't be searching them out either. As to the story, there is a reason it is a classic. Dickens weaves a great plot with enough subplots to keep the listeners' interest. The story line is revealed enough at the right time so as to not injury the overall story but also not scarcely so much so as the listeners' intelligence is insulted. That the story was originally produced in serial from it must do as it does. Worthy of a third book and moving on to Evelyn Waugh next.

Cuts out?

I highly enjoyed this book but the very end cuts off in what sounds like the middle of a sentence. Everything else about it was highly enjoyable.

Luxuriant

Immersive and a pleasure.
Very annoying repetition of some sections of the story recording also the recording cuts off before the story fully finishes.

For the serious Dickensian

To tackle this novel in any form is no idle pastime, but requires a serious commitment of time and intellect. With its complex interweaved narrative strands (alternating between Esther's first-person narrative and that of a nameless omniscient narrator), its extensive cast of characters, and its frequent digressions, it poses a particular challenge as an audiobook. It is the kind of novel that should have an index, and which in paper form would have had me often searching back through the pages for a reminder about who had said what to whom and when. Since this was not supported in my audio reader, there was no alternative but to soldier on through the thicket. A novel this dense in character and incident would challenge the greatest actor, but with Peter Batchelor on top form my interest never flagged. If I had one quibble it would be with the production itself - the frequent "re-recordings" are spliced in rather too abruptly, distracting from the flow of words. As for the story itself, Dickens' usual slow buildup is taken to extremes here, but the eventual payoff is as moving as he ever achieved elsewhere. The difficulty for the modern reader is to comprehend how a lawsuit can simply continue under its own momentum without any prospect of conclusion for generations despite the best will of its parties to end it. This undermines its effectiveness as the central narrative device that underpins the action of the novel, but as a critique of the legal system of the time, it was epoch-making and quite possibly history-changing. The greatest incidental pleasure is to be had in the minor comic characters such as the paragon of "deportment", Mr Turvidrop, and the evangelist Mr Chadband with his orotund sermonising (ministers of any stripe rarely fare well in Dickens' hands). Serious Dickens fans simply must attempt this, but best you know what to expect beforehand. You will be glad if you can make it to the end.