Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Originally published in 1861 this is a coming-of-age story about a young orphan, Pip. It is full of wonderfully-drawn characters each acting according to their own view of right and wrong. These different ways of looking at the world are skillfully woven together to create the man that Pip eventually becomes.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Originally published in 1861 this is a coming-of-age story about a young orphan, Pip. It is full of wonderfully-drawn characters each acting according to their own view of right and wrong. These different ways of looking at the world are skillfully woven together to create the man that Pip eventually becomes.
In discussing the ending (which was not the originally intended conclusion to the story) with his biographer Dickens said he had "put in as pretty a little piece of writing as I could." It is only one of many pretty pieces of writing included in the novel. For example:
"It was a dark night, though the full moon rose as I left the enclosed lands, and passed out upon the marshes. Beyond their dark line there was a ribbon of clear sky, hardly broad enough to hold the large red moon. In a few minutes she had ascended out of that clear field, in among the piled mountains of cloud." (p. 432)
This book is from my Classics Club list and it counts toward the Back to the Classics challenge as a 19th century classic.
For a long time, this was one of the few Dickens works I disliked - but I read the original dismal ending. On a reread, with the revised ending, I liked it much better, though I still rank A Tale of Two Cites, David Coppefield, and Bleak House ahead of it.
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