I am sorry to be re-reading Bleak House. Reading for the first time, I should say, the parts I had elided previously. But, as with Richard and so many others who just had to get to the bottom of Jarndyce v Jarndyce, I am glad that I now know, or am knowing, how the case really stands.

Nabakov said in his lectures that Dickens' greatest strength was as "story-teller." Bleak House tells too many stories. Some of them it tells very well. Others, Eather's Narrative, it tells poorly, and the good get lost in the bad.