Daryl Prasad

'Bleak House' by Charles Dickens 1853, is one of the most surprisingly optimistic novels I have ever read. Contrasting brightly against the sooty fog, mud and mire of the Chancery Court environment is Esther, who as her name suggests, is literally the 'star' of the novel. Her beautifully simple, insightful and poignant narrations give hope, love and joy to many hopelessly complex and irredeemable situations, all stemming from the inordinately lengthy legal case before the Chancery Court called 'Jarndyce and Jarndyce'. I read: "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens, Crown Edition, London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1896? (with 40 delightful and sometimes haunting illustrations by 'Phiz') The LibriVox audiobook by Mil Nicholson is a superb reading of Dicken's work.

One of the most extraordinary novels I have ever read. The almost unbearable sadness of the first dozen or so chapters leads to a rollercoaster ride of poignancy, tragedy, love, friendship and then there is..."deception, fraud, conspiracy,...and the name of the whole atrocious mass is⁠ —⁠ HEEP !". Amazing characters and character development. Mr. Micawber is hilarious, and his letters had me in fits of laughter. Truly a masterpiece of English literature.

An absolute tragedy...Sydney Carton is one of the most noble characters I have ever come across...a masterpiece of English literature.

Chapter XIV of Dombey and Son was quite unexpectedly one of the most moving pieces of literature that I have ever read...An extraordinary novel, possibly the best novel I have ever read...a wonderful exploration of the complexities of human natures...fascinating characters...an incredible work of English literature!

The superb character development in Books I-IV leads into a fascinating story about the lives of those characters in the fictional 1830s English town of Middlemarch. The characters will stay with me for the rest of my life. Eliot's command of the English language is extraordinary. Some sentences are so densely packed with meaning that it would take other good writers paragraphs to convey the same meaning. The length of the work belies how concisely Eliot writes.