Bleak House by Charles Dickens

This book has frustrated me!  I love Charles Dickens, and this novel was to be one of his best (and is often reviewed as such), but it has been something of struggle.

On a positive note the book achieves some of the same brilliant moments as in his other works.  He creatives such wonderful, loving settings of home life and domestic happiness.  And the good heart and works of protagonist Esther Summerson provide real joy.

But the overabundance of characters, some 50 recurring, and the requisite story lines to carry all of those characters, results in so much confusion and distraction that it erodes from the inherent loveliness of the principal story.  If only he could stick to fewer characters and a central storyline (or two or three)!

I know that the novel form was still new and developing, so it's not Dickens' fault.  Modern readers expect rather fewer stories, not the meandering, often disjointed narrative.  And publishing in installments doesn't lend itself to cohesion.  But I felt like Bleak House was a throwback to Pickwick Papers, his first novel.

But I will give him the benefit of the doubt, try to remember the joy of Esther's narrative and the lead characters (John Jarndyce, Ada and Richard Carstone, Lady and Sir Leicester Dedlock) and their respective narratives.

And that leaves me on the eve of World War I, which I'm particularly anxious to pursue.