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brendarusso's review against another edition
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
jenmangler's review against another edition
1.0
Some books suck you in and you don’t ever want to leave. Some books are a slog. For me, Great Expectations was the latter. I felt every single page. It was work to get through. Reading this book was not an enjoyable experience. It's not that I hated the book, it's that I just didn't care.
wyatt1004's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
tycherose's review against another edition
funny
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
usernameisabhay's review against another edition
Even though the plot was very good, the writing style was so intolerable(for me). I didn't want to get in a reading slump so I just quit. I will come back to it someday, just not anytime soon.
cbeltran's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
grantwest's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
jordibontje's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
afterttherain's review against another edition
5.0
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”
Great Expectations seemed like such an intimidating text when I first picked it up, but it very quickly became a comfort book. Being a bildungsroman, it's such a beautiful take on Pip's growth and development as a character - and Dickens' sheer talent shines through in his beautiful writing and in the craft of his stories and characters.
Dickens is great in showing that something can be realistic and yet still beautiful and wholesome, and while tears will be involved in the process, it needs not to be where we stop. This book is about identity, about justice, about social class, about love and compassion towards one another, about family, about friendships... It still blows my mind how Dickens manage to sew all of these topics together.
Some personal favourites: Estella (please can you marry me), Herbert & Pip's friendship, the fact that Wemmick is a softie, the last page of Volume 1 where Pip cries as he left his town, HERBERT, "I will be true to you as you have been true to me", Biddy's ending ♡, and the fact that there is another Little Pip :^)
I loved, loved, loved this. Definitely going into one of my favourite books. The past week has also not necessarily been the best, and I haven't been feeling the best, but this has definitely helped me push through.
Full thoughts:my blog
Great Expectations seemed like such an intimidating text when I first picked it up, but it very quickly became a comfort book. Being a bildungsroman, it's such a beautiful take on Pip's growth and development as a character - and Dickens' sheer talent shines through in his beautiful writing and in the craft of his stories and characters.
Dickens is great in showing that something can be realistic and yet still beautiful and wholesome, and while tears will be involved in the process, it needs not to be where we stop. This book is about identity, about justice, about social class, about love and compassion towards one another, about family, about friendships... It still blows my mind how Dickens manage to sew all of these topics together.
Some personal favourites: Estella (please can you marry me), Herbert & Pip's friendship, the fact that Wemmick is a softie, the last page of Volume 1 where Pip cries as he left his town, HERBERT, "I will be true to you as you have been true to me", Biddy's ending ♡, and the fact that there is another Little Pip :^)
I loved, loved, loved this. Definitely going into one of my favourite books. The past week has also not necessarily been the best, and I haven't been feeling the best, but this has definitely helped me push through.
Full thoughts:my blog
daja57's review against another edition
5.0
One of the most popular of the novels of Charles Dickens, Great Expectations is a bildungsroman narrated in the first person, in the past tense, warning of the dangers of trying to turn a working-class boy into a gentleman. (In Oliver Twist, the hero can be successfully transformed because, despite his upbringing in a workhouse, he is of good birth and nature trumps nurture. For all his early support of social reform, Dickens, himself a middle-class boy who had been plunged into the lower classes by the improvidence of his parents before escaping through his writing, was a great believer that the social hierarchy of Victorian Britain was god-ordained.)
A with most novels by Dickens, it's plot is heavily convoluted. It was originally published in serial form so a cliff-hanger is needed every few chapters. The hook at the start of the book occurs at the bottom of the first page.
Again, as is typical with Dickens, it contains extravagantly grotesque but utterly memorable characters. Dickens develops his characters through their appearances, often succinctly but vividly described (eg "an old-looking young man of a heavy order of architecture"; Ch 23), their behavioural characteristics (eg the way Mrs G cuts bread in chapter 2) and the peculiarities of their speech (Joe Gargery being the prime example in this novel). Some of the cast are little more than comic decorations (eg Trabb's boy, Pumblechook and Mr Wopsle, and the Aged P). But even his major characters rarely develop. Joe is salt-of-the-earth throughout. It takes brain damage to make Mrs Gargery nice. Jaggers is Jaggers, Wemmick is Wemmick, Estelle is Estelle. They are little more than scenery with which the hero can interact, against whom he can fulfil his potentialities. Only the half-mad Miss Havisham, to a very limited extent, and Pip, who is growing up, change. This is what limits Great Expectations. It is hugely entertaining but it is entertainment rather than art.
It is like a painting that impresses one by the skill shown in creating a two-dimensional scene with three-dimensional verisimilitude. Dickens achieves this with his detailed descriptions of settings. He clearly knew these places intimately and he can recreate them in the mind of the readers. Many of these settings are classic Gothic melodrama settings: the deserted churchyard on the misty marshes, the tumbledown crowded buildings in London, the desolate dereliction of Miss Havisham's house. But, as with his characters, they are utterly memorable.
The start of the plot:
Pip, an orphan living with his sister and her blacksmith husband on the marshes of the Thames estuary in Kent, encounters an escaped convict, Magwitch, and is terrified into helping him. Later, he is sent as a playmate for the girl being brought up by Miss Havisham, a rich recluse who retired from the world when she was jilted on her wedding day. Years later, when Pip is an apprentice blacksmith, he is told by a London lawyer that he has great expectations of inheriting a substantial fortune but the identity of the donor is to be kept hidden. Pip, believing the donor to be Miss Havisham, goes to London to be educated as a gentleman, and starts to look down on his former family and friends.
Of course, being Dickens, there are multiple sub-plots, all of which, however fancifully, are resolved in the end. Had I written the book I would have excised at least the Orlick plot; it isn't necessary, it over-complicates the plot, it blurs the focus.
Fundamentally, though, the novel, though long, is easy to read, is packed full of incident, has a wonderful cast, and, as entertainment, is superb.
A with most novels by Dickens, it's plot is heavily convoluted. It was originally published in serial form so a cliff-hanger is needed every few chapters. The hook at the start of the book occurs at the bottom of the first page.
Again, as is typical with Dickens, it contains extravagantly grotesque but utterly memorable characters. Dickens develops his characters through their appearances, often succinctly but vividly described (eg "an old-looking young man of a heavy order of architecture"; Ch 23), their behavioural characteristics (eg the way Mrs G cuts bread in chapter 2) and the peculiarities of their speech (Joe Gargery being the prime example in this novel). Some of the cast are little more than comic decorations (eg Trabb's boy, Pumblechook and Mr Wopsle, and the Aged P). But even his major characters rarely develop. Joe is salt-of-the-earth throughout. It takes brain damage to make Mrs Gargery nice. Jaggers is Jaggers, Wemmick is Wemmick, Estelle is Estelle. They are little more than scenery with which the hero can interact, against whom he can fulfil his potentialities. Only the half-mad Miss Havisham, to a very limited extent, and Pip, who is growing up, change. This is what limits Great Expectations. It is hugely entertaining but it is entertainment rather than art.
It is like a painting that impresses one by the skill shown in creating a two-dimensional scene with three-dimensional verisimilitude. Dickens achieves this with his detailed descriptions of settings. He clearly knew these places intimately and he can recreate them in the mind of the readers. Many of these settings are classic Gothic melodrama settings: the deserted churchyard on the misty marshes, the tumbledown crowded buildings in London, the desolate dereliction of Miss Havisham's house. But, as with his characters, they are utterly memorable.
The start of the plot:
Pip, an orphan living with his sister and her blacksmith husband on the marshes of the Thames estuary in Kent, encounters an escaped convict, Magwitch, and is terrified into helping him. Later, he is sent as a playmate for the girl being brought up by Miss Havisham, a rich recluse who retired from the world when she was jilted on her wedding day. Years later, when Pip is an apprentice blacksmith, he is told by a London lawyer that he has great expectations of inheriting a substantial fortune but the identity of the donor is to be kept hidden. Pip, believing the donor to be Miss Havisham, goes to London to be educated as a gentleman, and starts to look down on his former family and friends.
Of course, being Dickens, there are multiple sub-plots, all of which, however fancifully, are resolved in the end. Had I written the book I would have excised at least the Orlick plot; it isn't necessary, it over-complicates the plot, it blurs the focus.
Fundamentally, though, the novel, though long, is easy to read, is packed full of incident, has a wonderful cast, and, as entertainment, is superb.