My Year With Dickens: Bleak House

Post #1 chronicling my year of reading Charles Dickens's complete novels.

The very first Dickens I read was A Christmas Carol. This is not unusual — it is, in fact, how most people first get acquainted with the great Brit. I loved that little ghost story from the start and read it a few times before venturing further into Dickens’s works. In a couple of fits and starts about five years ago, I read his first two novels, The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist. I enjoyed them, but was also a bit frustrated by how difficult it was for me to pick up on the playful but rather verbose writing style.

I took a Dickens break for a few years and grabbed Great Expectations, a novel always counted among his very best, in late 2023. I quite liked both the story and the characters and was able to follow the writing a little better than before, even though I knew I was also missing some things. Knowing I wanted to read it again, I picked it as the Big Read’s selection for Nov/Dec ‘24. On that re-read, I was utterly captivated. I couldn’t put it down, gulping in as much Pip and Estella and Joe and Magwitch as I could. It combined entertaining plot twists, heartbreaking social themes, and inspiring moral ideas. That’s kind of Dickens’s modus operandi.

Something about Dickens, though, is hard for me to fully get on a first reading. And yet, subsequent ventures into the text have been incredibly rewarding.

The lesson: I love Dickens, but it takes me at least one re-read for things to click.

Thus, I decided 2025 would be my year to read all of Dickens’s major works — three books would be re-reads while thirteen would be totally fresh. If nothing else, I wanted to get those first reads out of the way and really immerse myself in his writing and ideas.

After I finish each of those books, I’ll share a dispatch with my overall thoughts and any themes that have stuck with me.

Let’s start in.

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Bleak House — Not as Bleak As You’d Think

I decided to start this year-long quest with Dickens’s longest novel: Bleak House. Nothing says January like a 1,000-page story with “bleak” in the title, eh? I expected one depressing scene after another, but that’s not at all what I found.

First, let me tell you about the story itself. Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce has been going through the legal system for as long as anyone can remember. The primary players are waiting for a judgment about wills and estates — someone is bound to get rich, but exactly who that is hasn’t been decided yet. With a sprawling cast of characters, Dickens skewers the essence of bureaucracy (among other things) and shows what unhealthy obsession leads to (it ain’t pretty).

Sure, there’s death, but that’s Dickens. Some unfortunate soul (or three) is gonna croak, no matter which of his stories you’re reading. But Bleak House was also surprisingly funny and light at times, brimming with the kinds of eccentric characters and whimsical scenes — including spontaneous combustion! — that Dickens is famous for.

There’s no denying that this beast of a book was long. It dragged for me at times, especially in the middle, but the first third and final third were great. Though I still like Great Expectations better, I can see why scholars rate this as his most sophisticated novel.

This isn’t the place to start with Dickens if you’re new to his work, but if you’ve read a couple of his major novels and enjoyed them, Bleak House should be high on your list.

Heading into 2025, there was a crystal clear theme that I’ve kept thinking about: We can’t rely on unjust systems and institutions to magically turn around and start making sense. When that happens, there are no winners. It’s easy to despair about the state of America’s institutions, but unless you allow yourself to obsess over them, there’s plenty of life to be found within your own families, friend circles, and neighborhoods. The real marrow of life on this planet is not found by relying on governments or corporations for our well-being; it’s found by deeply loving and caring for the people immediately around us.

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Thanks so much for reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this British masterpiece.

-Jeremy