What larks Pip! (Great Expectations - Charles Dickens)

Member Name: valve90210

Product:	Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Date:	10/11/08 (332 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A wonderfully well told story, wonderfully descriptive writing brings the world of the book to life

Disadvantages: Writing style takes some getting used to.

My first experience of the Dickens classic Great Expectations was when I studied it at School as part of my English course. This basically entaled the entire book being read to us over the course of several lessons, with the occassional reading duty given out to a member of the class to give the teacher a break. This was a very disjointed way of reading the book as it not only did it take seemingly forever but also it was very hard to concentrate on being read to over the course of a double lesson which lasted one hour and ten minutes. That said, I found the actual plot of the story to be really quite good. Having read the book, we also watched one of the film versions, which helped bring it all together as it only took a couple of lessons to get through the story in the film.

Years and years later, I decided to give reading it a try as I could not remember much of the storyline but I did remember that it was quite good. As such I got hold of a reasonably priced Penguin Classics version of the book and began to read it. This was just after New Year a couple of years ago. I don't have a great deal of time to do much reading so it tended to be a few minutes at night before going to bed.

Being a reader of more modern literature, I initially found Dickens' style of writing to be quite hard to follow as he is very descriptive of locations, events, times etc, this coupled with the fact that I was oftenon the verge of sleep when reading the book meant that by the time I had finished reading a passage, for example a description, I had forgotten what exactly it was I was reading about, and I often had to skip back a few pages to remind myself. Not to mention the times I had to re-read pages time after time because I was drifting off to sleep and couldn't focus on what was happening!

This meant that my progress through the book was rather slower than it might have been. However, I did eventually get to grips with the writing style and I also started to read it at times when I was rather more awake, and I found it to be a very good book indeed.

The plot, while seemingly simple actually has nice twists and nice depth to it which is gradually introduced to the reader as the story meanders along. Basically, Pip, the young orphaned brother of a rather tough older sister who is married to an uneducated Blacksmith becomes the subject of an unknown benefactor who pays for him to be well homed, well dressed and well educated with a view to giving him rather more opportunities and expectations in life than he would previously have had. The story develops as Pip grows from a young boy into a young man, with his relationships with his friends, potential suitors, his family and the mysterious old lady, from the town he grew up in, named Mrs Haversham.

It is in essense a classic rags to riches story exploring how coming into money can change a person and effect the course of their life. In some ways it is still quite a pertinent story as I'm sure a great many people these days have wondered what they would do if they came into money and their 'expectations' were suddenyl able to be much greater. Hasn't everybody wondered what they would do if they won the lottery?

Although I did find it quite heavy going at times, I would have to say this is a great piece of story telling, and one which I would recommend reading. It might take a while to get used to the style of writing as it is rather more wordy that books of today but with that comes such wonderful descriptive writing that the world of the book is really brought to life in the imagination so much so that you can almost see the events unfolding in your mind rather than merely living on the pages.

If you have never read the book, or have only watched a film version of it, I would say it was certainly worth a read, if only to open your eyes to the world of true classic story telling.

Summary: A classic that deserves to be read.