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 Rapturous Moments in Dickens! November 27, 2007
We all need our dreams. We have all fallen in love. Dickens's susceptible hero Pip believes that the 'star' of his dream is the beautiful Estella, because she had been granted to him by his fairy God-mother Miss Havisham, in a rare moment of compassion. Every turn of Pip's first person narration in the novel shouts 'No!' to his interpretation of the world and its tricksy words. Yet Pip's near fatal fallibility and misreading of his expectations humanises him and aligns his desperate romantic hopefulness to our own. Uneasily we admit our own private quests for love, and what a big love we crave after all!
'Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of my self. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here...You have been in every prospect I have ever seen...You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with....'
Pip's incantatory admission that love has engulfed his life is gloriously obsessive and bravely embarrassing. Like Carol Ann Duffy in Rapture: 'When did your name change from a proper noun to a charm?' Dickens's hero gives voice to love's piratical need to ambush all signs of the beloved and claim them greedily for oneself. Pip's 'wonder' in the light of his icy star Estella anticipates Gatsby's 'wonder' at Daisy's famous 'green light' in Fitzgerald's much later novel.
Read and be awed. We all love dangerously once!
read it! November 14, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Finished re-reading this today. I'd forgotten just how fantastically playful and engaging Dickens' prose is: blink and you'll miss a delightful description of a chair, house or file brought to life. Besides the legendary Miss Havisham and Magwitch, Pip's story is also populated with such memorable characters as the finger-biting lawyer Jaggers; the warm-hearted, postbox-mouthed Wemmick (who literally fortifies his private life with the 'Aged P'); and the grandiose windbag Pumblechook. No novelist can match Dickens for sheer imaginative generosity; his fictional universe fizzes with diversity, depth and irrepressible vitality. As befits a book written originally for weekly publication, there's also a wealth of cliffhangers that'll keep you turning the pages. Blissful.
 a diamond in the rough. May 15, 2006
2 out of 10 found this review helpful
I am not much of a Dickens fan. I think he tells a good story and they in turn make excellent tv but as for reading material they fail to impress me. However this book is a good one. I liked it and its gothic atmosphere. There are twists to keep you interested and a collection of memorable characters. I even managed to overlook the silly names the characters have. This is a good book I reccomend it.
Addictive January 21, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
I spent most of my 45 years since leaving school doing my best to avoid anything by Charles Dickens, quite why, I'm not sure. A recent illness and enforced idleness had me rummaging around some books I had come by and there was Great Expectations. I thought I'd try just the first chapter, but was hooked from the first page. This is one helluva book! The pace, the characterisation, the plot, the atmosphere, the everything are masterly. But it isn't all misery as there are frequent moments of irony and typically English gallows humour. Outstanding, but it'll make you cry.
Tragi-comic masterpiece January 1, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
At it's heart Great Expectations is a very bleak novel, with Pip's mysterious inheritance leading to nothing but misery, and his hopeless unrequited love for Estella the cause of numerous woes, but Dickens simultaneously manages to turn this into a comic delight by the inclusion of a host of arch characters: the pompous local tradesman Pumblechook, who tries to claim credit for Pip's good fortune; lawyer Wemmick, who schizophrenically divides his entire personality between work and home, where he turns his house into a castle and comforts his 'Aged P'; Pips monstrous sister, who is so mean to him that it actually becomes amusing; the list goes on. Even the opening, with Pip being confronted by an escaped prisoner on the moors seems to be played for laughs, but as the narrative goes on and Pip's struggling to attain the status worthy of Estella backfires, the book becomes far more sombre, ending up with a moving and ambiguous downbeat ending.
The plotting is tight, hinging around a misconception by Pip regarding the nature of his mysterious benefactor, and though it stretches credulity with it's reliance on unlikely coincidences, and the constant back and forth between London and Pips rural home village become rather tiresome towards the end, the strength of the characters keep this novel alive. Every character of importance is vivid and compelling, from Pip's simple-minded but good-hearted father-figure Joe; the mean-spirited Miss Haversham, who sits amongst the rotted remains of her aborted wedding-day and plots against love itself; her cold and mysterious ward Estella, who has been nurtured into a loveless creature that Pip is sure he can save - it is through the characters that this book shines.
A dark and compelling plot, larger-than-life characters and brilliant prose makes this an essential read.
(NB _ This Wordsworth edition also includes a helpful introduction, the original (inferior) ending, and notes on more obscure references within the text).
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