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  • Although not my personal favorite, this novel displays Dickens at the height of his powers. Written with more concision than one generally finds, the characterization is masterfully portrayed with amazing verisimilitude. And, of course, the novel is peopled with his usual unforgettable cast of secon ... Continue

    Although not my personal favorite, this novel displays Dickens at the height of his powers. Written with more concision than one generally finds, the characterization is masterfully portrayed with amazing verisimilitude. And, of course, the novel is peopled with his usual unforgettable cast of secondary characters. I consider this Dickens' most polished work, a stunning example of what makes him one of the greatest authors in the English language.

    

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• ― guaddess said on May 30, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

Great Expectations, described by G. K. Chesterton as a “study in human weakness and the slow human surrender,” may be called Charles Dickens’s finest moment in a remarkably illustrious literary career.

In an overgrown churchyard, a grizzled convict springs upon an orphan named Pip. The convict terrifies the young boy and threatens to kill him unless Pip helps further his escape. Later, Pip finds himself in the ruined garden where he meets the bitter and crazy Miss Havisham and her foster child Estella, with whom he immediately falls in love. After a secret benefactor gives him a fortune, Pip moves to London, where he cultivates great expectations for a life which would allow him to discard his impoverished beginnings and socialize with the idle upper class. As Pip struggles to become a gentleman and is tormented endlessly by the beautiful Estella, he slowly learns the truth about himself and his illusions.

Written in the last decade of his life, Great Expectations reveals Dickens’s dark attitudes toward Victorian society, its inherent class structure, and its materialism. Yet this novel persists as one of Dickens’s most popular. Richly comic and immensely readable, Great Expectations overspills with vividly drawn characters, moral maelstroms, and the sorrow and pity of love.

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