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Bait and switch

Revisado: 03-06-24

Instead of an in depth physical, psychological, archeological, historical and/ or genetic exploration of how and why human beings swim, this is a boring repetitive account of various arduous swimming feats, people who feel compelled to swim an extraordinary amount and lots of not very interesting personal details about the author and her obsessions with swimming. Yes a lot of people like swimming because it is fun. Period. Almost nobody experience the transcendent and compelling rapture and awe she says she experiences. So, in the end it is hard to relate to what she seems to think is universal but so very far from it. This book is not why WE swim, but just why SHE swims. Yawn.

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Tedious listening - terrible narration of an overlong story

Revisado: 03-31-23

I am a huge AC fan, having listened to most of her work. I had a hard time getting through this one. The main problem was the narration. Ms. Fox simply cannot do male voices. So she uses growling. Many chapters are the words from a man’s diary spoken by him and so you are forced to hear this growling for 20 or 30 minutes each time his chapter comes up. Ugh. Hearing her gruff growling churn on and on was excruciating. She even made the dashing male love interest sound like a gruff coal miner. She also is a very slow reader dragging out sentences tediously. Unfortunately this story is already too long and convoluted making the listen a chore rather than a pleasure. I will never listen to another book read by Ms. Fox. I am sure that Hugh would have made this a much more enjoyable book.

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Somewhat unique Agatha Christie mystery

Revisado: 06-09-22

An intriguing story, charming young friends, she a young duchess, he just a guy, team up as the sleuths to solve a tangled and evil plot. Their light banter is fresh and fun in breezy 1920’s slang. The only problem was, as others have said, the performance was annoying. The voices Ms. Fox provides for the characters are not just poor they are awful and hard to listen to. It was hard to tell at times who was talking because the voices were so odd or inappropriate. Some shrill, some inappropriately gruff. Odd choice for a performer. But the story was good enough to keep me listening.

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Great book, but this version is NOT unabridged

Revisado: 09-09-19

This is one of Dickens' best books. My reason for this review is to PROTEST the outrageous false representation of this as an unabridged version. After finishing the book (which I greatly enjoyed) I went online to read what others had to say about the characters. It was there that I learned that IMPORTANT CHARACTERS and all the chapters relating to them WERE COMPLETELY OMITTED from this so-called unabridged version. For example, I learned that in the full book there is a Mr. Riah, a Jew who is kind and gentle who worked with a Mr. Fledgeby a money lender, but neither of them appear in this audio book at all. Both had important roles in the un-butchered book but all chapters relating to them are gone. I further found that many other chapters were also dropped in their entirety. It is disappointing and annoying to have spent many hours listening to this book only to find I did not get the whole story. Audible should make it clear that this is a significantly ABRIDGED version. Even if some would want a cut version of this master's book, all should be told in advance that this is what this version is - perhaps making clear what characters are omitted and what other portions of the book are cut out so listeners can make an informed choice. This is why I do not give this 5 stars overall. The narrator is excellent as is the story.

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A great book but with some flaws.

Revisado: 05-02-19

First, sorry for saving space by not starting with an overall summary of this long complicated the story, I assume that you have read it. If not, there is a very good summary on Wikipedia. And most of the key points of the story can be gleaned from the discussion here. Second, sorry for the length of this review, but this review focuses on characters and there are LOTS of them.

Bleak House has been identified as Dickens' best novel by respected authors and critics. I make no claim to such expertise, but I do not agree with this assessment. Though it is a great novel, in my opinion it is nowhere near as good as A Tale of Two Cities, or several other Dickens masterpieces, due to the flaws discussed below. But on the plus side, as usual Dickens has a host of wonderfully drawn and memorable characters including villains, saints, sensible people and characters who are, to be frank, lunatics. The story drives forward with suspense, entanglements, curious events, amazing coincidences, mysteries, and even a detective story – maybe the first in literature.

Almost a “character” in the book is the interminable litigation over the Jarndyce estate which had the potential of making those determined to be the rightful heirs extremely wealthy. This is a vehicle for Dickens to satirize the ridiculously protracted and apparently directionless chancery proceedings, and how lives have been twisted, impoverished or ruined by it. As a retired litigation attorney, I was amused by this satire.

But in my experience of the novel, I feel it suffers from a significant flaw that detract from its greatness – namely that that the primary characters are not all that interesting. The protagonist, Esther, is the ward of Mr. Jarndyce and lives comfortably in his mansion and without any significant crises or problems to overcome. Her score on the “interesting character” scale in my view is close to zero. Worse, she is a weepy saint - a mother Teresa, loving all, caring for all, working tirelessly and selflessly. While admirable, such a goody two shoes becomes tiresome, particularly as the narrator of half the book. And her weeping! Her tears are constantly welling up, wetting her cheeks, wetting the page, etc. etc. – in response to anything that is even slightly sad, good, or touching. Just looking at a friend will cause her to weep. This is at first sort of OK, but soon becomes cloying, tedious, and insufferable. Give me a break. Mr. Jarndyce, her guardian, is “father Teresa” dispensing support, aid and assistance and love and kind advice to everyone. Also while admirable, not very interesting. A mystery is the source of his wealth, considering that he, like others in the book, is a potential heir to an ongoing will contest the failed resolution of which seems to impoverish the other potential heirs. Dr. Woodcourt is likewise a one-dimensional saint who wins Esther’s love but has little of interest to offer us readers.

The other main characters are also flawed. Lady Honoria Dedlock turns out to be Esther’s mother who did not know Esther survived childbirth (a fact concealed by her sister Miss Barbary who then raised Esther). Esther was the result of a love affair prior to Honoria’s marriage to Sir Leicester, an illustrious baronet, who loves her dearly. Honoria is a vain world-weary humorless woman, utterly unlikable. Because of her link to Esther we are forced to spend far too much time with recounts of her multiple, boring, pointless peregrinations. Honoria’s fear of embarrassment over Esther’s existence prevents her from re-uniting with her daughter after she learns Esther was alive, makes it impossible to sympathize with her as she abandons her loving husband to crawl off to die on the grave of the lover who fathered Esther. It is clear that she never loved her husband nor cared for anyone but herself. Being a bad person does not necessarily prevent a figure from being a good character. But in this case, she was just boring and having no investment in her, I had no interest at all in her demise.

Other flawed main characters are Richard and Ada. Richard is related to Mr. Jarndyce, and is also a potential heir of the Jarndyce estate. Richard comes to live with Jarndyce at the same time as Esther and Ada Clare, another ward of Jarndyce. Richard proves to be feckless and irresponsible, and obsessed with his potential bounty from the Jarndyce estate. For some unfathomable reason, Ada is besotted by him with undying love. While a crush as a youth living in the same house with him could be understood, her continued devotion after he proves to be a worthless lout, is ridiculous. Instead of tiring of him as she grows up, she devotes herself to him more fiercely as though a zombie to a mesmerizing cult figure. Her adored Richard dies when the estate proves valueless, leaving her destitute, and with child, who she crazily names after him as though he were to be cherished and remembered. A head scratcher, that. But Ada herself is perhaps the biggest zero in the book. She says or does nothing on her own of interest or that suggests any hint of intelligence or personality. Her only virtue is her beautiful face, and eyes and hair that Esther carries on about over and over – bringing Esther to tears as usual. Indeed, from modern eyes it looks like Esther had a lesbian love for Ada who she swoons over, cries over, pets and kisses. They lay their heads on each other breast repeatedly, sleep in the same bedroom, dress each other, and spend an inordinate time together. This is the only real and deep love story in the book.

The three saints, and Richard and Ada are surrounded by interesting scoundrels, odd-balls., and whackos. One example is Mrs. Jellyby a lunatic who devotes herself obsessively to a dubious foreign charitable cause, while criminally neglecting her own children, and abusing her daughter, while her husband silently witnesses this mistreatment without lifting a finger to protect his own children. Yet another insufferable character is Mr. Skimpole, a scheming parasite who pretends not to understand what money is and sponges off others. Mr. Jarndyce’s indulgence of this fraud calls into question Mr. Jarndyce’s judgment. And Mr.Smallweed is a humorously twisted old villainous wretch who suffers from an odd disease that confines him to a chair, down from which he keeps sliding when in his apoplectic rages.

There a host of dastardly characters populating this book including Miss Barbary, Honoria’s sister who viciously and cruelly raises Esther until she, Barbary, dies. And then there is Mr. Vholes who squeezes Richard dry with fees for useless legal work, and Hortense, a scheming, jealous, wild and evil housemaid who eventually commits murder.

Other oddball characters include Mr. Krook an alcoholic and a hoarder who dies of spontaneous combustion; Guster, a maidservant who constantly goes off in fits at the slightest provocation; and Mr. Turveydrop who is exceedingly vain and worthless and a sponge off his son and daughter in law. There are lots of other odd characters.

The most sympathetic character is Jo, a destitute waif, who meekly puts up with his plight, cooperates when needed, and dies young of his rough life.

There are some menches include Mr. George, who helps Jo when help is needed and otherwise acts admirably; Inspector Bucket, a detective who solves two mysteries in the book; and Mr. Snagsby, Jo’s only friend, who regularly gives Jo some money on which to survive.

One character, Mr. Tulkington, is a lawyer for Sir Leicester. Honoria asks him to do some investigation (secretly directed to finding her former lover). This causes him to suspect she has a secret she is keeping from his client, and which could harm his client’s interests. So he himself tries to determine what Honoria is hiding and his investigation leads him to discover her love affair and the fact that it produced Esther. He confronts Honoria with these facts and tells her he must inform his client of this information. Tulkington is apparently seen by some as one of the villains in the book, though it is not clear what he does wrong. He is not a warm person for sure, but what he does is driven by his duty to look out for his client’s interest and he wants Honoria to come clean with her husband. Had she done so, she would have found Sir Leicester forgiving and all would have been well. But she ran away instead, and then Mr. Tulkington himself is murdered by Hortense.

There are literally dozens of other characters in this book, something that often made my head swim. I had to keep a chart to remind me of who was who.

Bottom line is that this is a great story by a great story teller, but with some significant flaws. In my view not Dickens’ best, but definitely a great book.

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Amusing appalling satiric and vastly entertaining

Revisado: 02-21-19

Candide the book tells a head spinning adventure of the naive young man of the book’s title. A helluva ride! Narrator Cameron does an excellent job keeping this lively tale hopping. His voices of the characters greatly add to the fun.

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