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A review by eddie_allen
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
5.0
A masterpiece of course.
Fantastic descriptions of the weather, the landscape and the people:
"...a tough high-shouldered stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane." (Pip's description of Mr Hubble).
Or: "...his fishy eyes and mouth open, his sandy hair inquisitively on end, and his waistcoat heaving with windy arithmetic..." (his description of the bullying old Pumblechook).
Or the reader's first, and then a later, encounter with Wemmick: "...a dry man, rather short in stature with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel...". "Wemmick was at his desk, lunching – and crunching – on a dry hard biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them". Super descriptions that are splashed with the author's genius for humour.
Dickens tells a good story and there is drama and moments of tension and fear such as Pip's coach journey from London to Kent where he is accompanied by two convicts and he describes their frightening presence as they sit directly behind him: "It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the convict's breathing, not only on the back of my neck but all along my spine ... and I was conscious of growing high-shouldered on one side, in my shrinking endeavours to fend him off."
Great Expectations is wordy and not so easy to digest when you're tired, but stick with it. Brilliant!
Fantastic descriptions of the weather, the landscape and the people:
"...a tough high-shouldered stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart: so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane." (Pip's description of Mr Hubble).
Or: "...his fishy eyes and mouth open, his sandy hair inquisitively on end, and his waistcoat heaving with windy arithmetic..." (his description of the bullying old Pumblechook).
Or the reader's first, and then a later, encounter with Wemmick: "...a dry man, rather short in stature with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel...". "Wemmick was at his desk, lunching – and crunching – on a dry hard biscuit; pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them". Super descriptions that are splashed with the author's genius for humour.
Dickens tells a good story and there is drama and moments of tension and fear such as Pip's coach journey from London to Kent where he is accompanied by two convicts and he describes their frightening presence as they sit directly behind him: "It is impossible to express with what acuteness I felt the convict's breathing, not only on the back of my neck but all along my spine ... and I was conscious of growing high-shouldered on one side, in my shrinking endeavours to fend him off."
Great Expectations is wordy and not so easy to digest when you're tired, but stick with it. Brilliant!