Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Just Finished: Great Expectations

I read Great Expectations both to fulfill the Classics category of the Mixing It Up challenge, and because a new BBC miniseries production of it will be airing where I live in April.  Very excited about that.  I first read this book in high school (we won't say how long ago), and remember almost nothing from that reading except that I liked it.  I liked it again--why not?  It has everything I enjoy about Dickens.

The sense of place is all I could hope for, from the bleak marshes, to the village blacksmith's bare, plain home, to the eerie decay of Miss Havisham's mansion, to the bustle and corruption of the London criminal courts.  This will, I think, be the chief pleasure of watching it on TV. 

There are of course, the incredibly vivid characters--dear Joe and deranged Miss Havisham stand out in my mind, but there is hardly a character in the book, however minor, who is one-dimensional, whose motivations we don't get at least a glimpse of.  Even "Trabb's boy," annoyer of Pip in the early days, reappears in a whole new light at the end, unexpected and yet exactly right. 

And the writing itself is pure pleasure.  A random selection:  "I looked as grateful as any boy possibly could, who was wholly uninformed why he ought to assume that expression."  "If he had shown indifference as a master, I have no doubt I should have returned the compliment as a pupil; he gave me no such excuse, and each of us did the other justice."  "The white vapor of the kiln was passing from us as we went by, and, as I had thought a prayer before, I thought a thanksgiving now."  It's hard to find a sentence that isn't graceful and packed with nuance.

Great, great fun.

12 comments:

  1. I just finished Hard Times and found it...well, not so very interesting. It probably wasn't the best Dickens novel to start off with. I have Great Expectations on my shelf. I should give that a try!

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    1. Hm, I haven't read Hard Times. But if you want to try GE and are worried about getting bored, I'd suggest that you not get discouraged around the second quarter of the book, which is a little slow. Keep going, and it really picks up after that--lots of new developments, suspense and surprise revelations. Oh, and A Tale of Two Cities has a fair amount of action and adventure, too; you might try that one if you haven't yet. My daughter read it for school last year and unexpectedly loved it.

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    2. BTW, I just saw your husband's review of Hard Times on your blog, and I absolutely want to read it now!

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  2. I'm reading this right now, about a quarter of the way through. Slow to start, but love the writing style and love the gothic feel of Miss. Havisham's mansion. It's an interesting story, looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.

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    1. Yes, the atmosphere is wonderful, isn't it? Stay with it through the slow part, you won't be sorry!

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  3. Yes, this a great book to start with if you are hesitant about Dickens. It changed my opinion of him.

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    1. It's made me want to go back and reread the ones I haven't looked at since high school--David Copperfield and Oliver Twist.

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  4. Salaams. As chance would have it, I'm finally "reading" (listening to) OLIVER TWIST. It's shameful how long it's taken me, but better late than never. Love it, except for the constant anti-Semitism of the portrayal of Fagin (usually referred to simply as "the Jew"). Svend

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    1. Wasalaam! Ack--I had forgotten that about Oliver Twist. It does seem to crop up now and again in English literature, from Shakespeare to Agatha Christie, unfortunately. I think I remember reading somewhere that Ms. Christie, shocked when the German atrocities against the Jews were made public, stopped inserting antisemitic remarks and characterizations into her books.

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