Product Description

Seven-year-old Pip is an orphan. He lives with his nasty older sister and works as a blacksmith’s apprentice. Pip dreams of a better life, but has no idea how to turn his luck around. Then a mysterious stranger decides to make all of Pip’s dreams come true. Pip’s lonely life is about to change forever. Will his great expectations be realized? Or will he learn that money and power are worthless without love and friendship?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #413786 in Books
• Published on: 1996-11-19
• Released on: 1996-11-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

Amazon.com Review
An absorbing mystery as well as a morality tale, the story of Pip, a poor village lad, and his expectations of wealth is Dickens at his most deliciously readable. The cast of characters includes kindly Joe Gargery, the loyal convict Abel Magwitch and the haunting Miss Havisham. If you have heartstrings, count on them being tugged.

Review
"No story in the first person was ever better told."
-- Review

Review
"No story in the first person was ever better told."

Customer Reviews

Wait until you're 25, then read
Yes, Dickens was paid by the word when writing this.
Yes, this is a big book
Yes, if you were forced to read it in school, you probably hated
Yes, if you read it on your own at or after age 25... you probably loved it.

I for one, thought this book was great, sure it was wordy, but it was not wordy in that "what the heck is he trying to say" way that gets many other wordy books (Crime and Punishment - though I blame the translators for that one).

Short Summary: This is the story of Pip, starting from a young age after his parents and many younger siblings are deceased and he is being raised by his militant sister and her lovable but slightly dense husband, Joe. Pip has very little hope of a future other than an apprenticeship with Joe as a Blacksmith. Suddenly... doors start opening for Pip, and opportunities present themselves to him. He accepts but never knows who or why strings are being pulled in the background to open these doors for him. We follow Pip through his life as he accepts these opportunities, and they lead him down a strange but wonderful path of self discovery, maturity, and opening his eyes to the real world.

The reason this book is so effective is because Pip is so real. We follow him through his blunders and successes, we dread his putting his foot in his mouth, saying the wrong things to Biddy, or Ms. Haversham, and we rejoice when he commits selfless acts and hate him when he commits selfish ones. It is my personal opinion that this book will have more of an affect on the late twenty year olds and up because by then you have suffered a bit, and made some of the same mistakes as Pip, you have wandered through finding your way in the world, and the confusion of who you are, wishing you were something else, loving what or who you cannot have, and figuring out what path to put your life on.

The rest of the cast of characters is quite a collection of multifaceted, entertaining, and interesting people. Ms. Haversham is a favorite of many, so strange, so tortured, so heartless, and so intriguing... then we have Dear old Joe, so Simple, and mild, and encouraging. Joe's love is unconditional and unwavering. Biddy, is so loyal, so kind, and so honest, then you have her polar opposite, Estella. There are so many other characters that are interesting, fun to read about and that you will have strong feelings for one way or another.

I highly recommend this book, even though it is over a century old, the language is not difficult to read (very little work required) and the plot and characters are stellar. True there are no explosions, but a book can be engaging with out them. Give it a try.

A work of lasting skill, value, and impact, truly a classic
It is astonishing to read literature this good, such that within the first few pages you know that no matter what the author does to the characters or how he concludes the story, and whether it suits my tastes in any specific direction, you realize that here is a work of lasting skill, value, and impact, truly a classic.

Now I came to this book with perhaps reduced expectations, not great ones, having only remembered reading The Christmas Carol by Dickens, a story so well known that it seems more created ex nihilo than spun of raw materials from the human mind. It exceeded my expectations in every direction--humor, plot and pacing, dialogue, description, action, romance, poignancy.

And it is interesting that in the end, Pip, despite his tremendous character growth and recovery from terminal and self-defacing self-centeredness, is still not the moral equal of Joe and Biddy (I should have seen that one coming, but didn't). I'm not sure even Dickens is conscious of the fact that no matter how far Pip has come in his redemption, he is still far behind Joe and Biddy in their pure human worth.

Wow.

Dourly illustrated, it accurately represents the situation in London in the mid ninteenth century
"Great Expectations" is one of the few works by Charles Dickens that I had neither read nor had any contact with. Other than knowing title and author, I had no knowledge of the work before reading this book. After reading it, I can say that the effect was what one would hope the Classics Illustrated works would have on people. The contact generated a desire in me to read the original work.
The artwork is generally dour, reflecting the reality of London in Dickens' time. While there were pockets of great wealth, there were enormous sections of grinding poverty and struggle. The lot of orphans was especially hard, with no social safety net of any kind, they were at the mercy of whatever benefactors they happened to encounter.
In many ways, the best way to learn about the social conditions of England in the mid nineteenth century is to read the novels of Charles Dickens. He tells it like it is, a place of great social consciousness, where the upper classes could do no wrong and the lower classes were expected to know their place. There is no better indicator of that than when working class Joe Gargery nurses the now gentleman Pip back to health and then after his recovery, Joe leaves Pip and goes back to his social station.