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Bleak House

So it begins. It’s a beast (a megalosaurus, to be precise).

The original was published in twenty instalments. Perhaps that’s the best way to read it; weekly, while reading something shorter in one go.

The fog in the Temple is great, of course.

Note: 01 March 2012

It’s World Book Day and I am 37% of the way through this book, according to my Kindle.

Completed 15 March 2012

The good: the way Dickens takes everything (the city, the weather, the land, the world, history, time) and bends it to his view. The night Tulkinghorn is shot is probably the single most atmospheric piece of writing I have ever read. The scale. The humour. The characters. The scale and degrees of good and evil.

The bad: the way every character ends up related in some way to every other character. The sentimentality. The tying-up of loose ends.