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Summary: A wonderful Dickens book for young adults.
Review: Pip a young boy is faced with many expectations at a young age. Pip meets a young lady named Estella, and he immedatley falls in love with her. The only problem is that
Estella thinks that Pip is a diry little rogue. Then an unknown person gives Pip wealth and a way to earn an education, part of the bargain is that Pip has to leave his
family and move to England. Pip is faced with these, and many other questions as he begins his great expectations. I
think most young people would like this book, because it's not as hard to read as Dicken's other classic books. It also has a little bit of everything in it, mystery, romance, and suspence. Something for everyone to enjoy.
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Summary: Social commentary, mystery, romance and a great story...
Review: I've never read any Dickens of my own free will. I was forced to read "A Tale of Two Cities" in high school and I thought that was enough for me. However, one day, on a whim, I bought a copy of Great Expectations. I'm not sure what I expected, but I certainly didn't expect to love it as much as I did.Dickens is not a writer to read at a swift pace. Indeed, this novel was written in weekly episodes from December 1860 to August 1861 and, as it was created to be a serial, each installment is full of varied characters, great descriptions and a lot of action which moves the plot along and leaves the reader yearning for more. Therefore, unlike some books which are easily forgotten if I put them down for a few days, Great Expectations seemed to stick around, absorbing my thoughts in a way that I looked forward to picking it up again. It took me more than a month to read and I savored every morsel. Basically the story is of the self-development of Pip, an orphan boy being raised by his sister and her blacksmith husband in the marshlands of England in 1820. Every one of the characters were so deeply developed that I felt I was personally acquainted with each one of them. There was Pip's roommate, Herbert Pocket, the lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, and his clerk, Mr. Wemmick. And then there was the wicked Orlick. The dialogues were wonderful. The characters often didn't actually say what they meant but spoke in a way that even though the words might be obtuse, there was no mistaking their meaning. I found myself smiling at all these verbal contortions. Dickens' work is richly detailed and he explores the nuances of human behavior. I enjoyed wallowing in the long sentences and letting myself travel backwards in time to a different world. However, even with the footnotes, I found myself sometimes confused by the British slang of 150 years ago, and there were several passages I had to read over several times in order to get the true meaning. Of course I was not in a particular rush. I didn't have to make a report to a class or take a exam about the book. This is certainly a pleasure. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good read.ting from the secret wealth of Magwitch, who made a fortune in Australia after being transported. Moreover, Magwitch's unlawful return to England puts him and Pip in danger. Meanwhile, Estella has married another, a horrible man who Pip despises. Eventually, with Magwitch's recapture and death in prison and with his fortune gone, Pip ends up in debtors prison, but Joe redeems his debts and brings him home. Pip realizes that Magwitch was a more devoted friend to him than he ever was to Joe and with this realization Pip becomes, finally, a whole and decent human being. Originally, Dickens wrote a conclusion that made it clear that Pip and Estella will never be together, that Estella is finally too devoid of heart to love. But at the urging of others, he changed the ending and left it more open ended, with the possibility that Estella too has learned and grown from her experiences and her wretched marriages. This is the work of a mature novelist at the height of his powers. It has everything you could ask for in a novel: central characters who actually change and grow over the course of the story, becoming better people in the end; a plot laden with mystery and irony; amusing secondary characters; you name it, it's in here. I would rank it with A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist and David Copperfield among the very best novels of the worlds greatest novelist. GRADE: A+
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Summary: A book everone should read
Review: I chose to write a review of Great Expectations because I wanted to be able to rate a novel "five-stars" without an ounce of hesitation. Context: I'm not by any means some sort of an intellect. Like many people who have read Great Expectations, I was assigned this book in high school. I remember looking to the end of the book, first, to see how many pages there were. I cringed. Then I began to read that first chapter about a boy named Pip who meets the convict looking for vittles. I won't give anything away about the plot. I only want to say that this was the first book that I ever read that I had me truly absorbed. I remember a kid in my class who read ahead a few chapters and had us all in wonder as to what twists transpired. He just smiled and said, "you won't believe how this thing turns out." After reading other Dickens books I realized that his greatest strengths was populating his books with amazing, odd, likeable, and despicable characters who found there way in and out of his stories. If you haven't read this book, do so.
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Summary: AHHH VERY boring
Review: This book was very boring. Details in a book make it interesting but the extended details in this book made it nausiating. This book had a very interesting plot and many good ideas but the way it was writen didnt appeal to most of the students in my school that read it. A poll was taken and about 73% of the students in the school liked this book. What does that show about the book?
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Summary: Great Expectations is possibly the worst book ever
Review: You guys should never read this book ever
Charles Dickens just goes on and on trying to make a point that you can do in a sentence. He takes the whole chapter. I don't recomend this for anyone. Only read it if forced to. It is not a good book.
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Summary: a classic is a classic is a classic
Review: great expectations is just that. i am not much of a classics fan, preferring contemporary writers. i decided to read this after reading john irving's "trying to save piggy sneed, in this book irving finishes with an essay on dickens where he says that great expectations was the book that made him want to write. being a big irving fan, i decided to read great expectations and i have to admit i was blown over by dickens' writing style. the humour, the characterisation, the verbal jugglery, the pompousness, the joy of writing were all apparent and absolute fun. the best thing about the book is that it hasnt aged one bit.
dickens writes with rare moral courage and compassion for the failings of his characters, he creates a vividly colourful world populated by extraordinary characters too bizarre to be real, yet makes us trust in them, and slowly makes us sympathise with them and eventually grow to love them. the strength of this book is not in its plot but rather in the style of writing.
a thoroughly enjoyable book if you love a colourful writing style.
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Summary: My favorite book!
Review: I never wanted to read this book, but a friend convinced me when he learned that I loved Pip on South Park (I found the little nerd funny). This was the best advice I'd ever taken. Reading this not only made me love Charles Dickens, but gave me a late start on loving reading in general.
Granted, it's a difficult book to read. Dickens packs his book with descriptions and long sentences (yet every word is important and helps with understanding) and he's not easy to get through. Yet Dickens still, with all his flaws, remains a masterful storyteller. His characters aren't deep, but they're relatable and memorable. I love Pip, Estella, Miss Havisham, Joe, Herbert Pocket, Magwitch, and Aged P, and even though I've read this book a long time ago, I love them just as much now as I did then.
It's a shame that people have to read this for school (I did so for my second time). It's a wonderful story that should be enjoyed by itself. If you haven't been made to read it, do so now. Push yourself through it and take your time (it took me a month to finish the book myself). You'll be glad you did. Assignments make you rush and over-analyze stories, and Dickens should never be read that way.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Expectations (note: not this specific edition)
Review: This is a great story of Pip (Philip Pirrip)'s obsessive love for a woman who neither loves him nor seems in any way the typical heroine. As he strives to become a gentleman, aided by an anonymous benefactor's money, he succeeds only in alienating those who love him best and most honestly. Appearances, as in most Dickens novels, are deceiving, and those who are wealthy in a material sense are not those who are wealthy in the emotional sense and vice versa. The language and sentence structure are both complex; if you have any difficulty in understanding this sort of English you'd do well to wait awhile before reading GREAT EXPECTATIONS, because Dickens' brilliance is in the wording. This is less humorous than many of his other stories; however the humor is there if you look for it and listen for it in the phrasing. Dickens provided two endings for this book, and, frankly, I don't care much for either...but read the book, read both endings, and decide for yourself.
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Summary: It's got flaws, but it's a very good and fun read.
Review: I'm here referring to the Oxford World's Classics edition, published in 1999. Firstly, I love the book itself. It's compact, the pages have a soft, easy feel to them, and the print is a welcome size: smaller but very readable. A+ here. The characters are particular and animate. Through the use of his famously detailed characterization and description, Dickens creates an elaborate colorful neighborhood of which you feel part. A+ for this escapism and for the sheer pleasure it brings. I especially admire his keen sense of the droll. However, while the tale runs well through the first half or so, as it progresses -- did you find so also? -- it loses the intact sympathies of the reader by trying to connect all the dots that its intricate plot has spun out into. It's forever tying its own shoes. I was similarly disappointment in the final denouement of Estella and Pip, as a let down and overly cerebral. (B-) But I highly recommend this book as a good Dickens novel, and on its own terms, a great one. A very fun read!
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