Rating: 
Summary: A great coming of age story
Review: Dickens was part of a great humanistic effort, of the 1800s, that more than ever evoked and espoused the Christian principles of human respect for one another. Great Expectations is about the unexplicable evil youth encounters and how one should rise above the hate and vindictiveness of stupid, petty people. It is a book that explains that there is great suffering in the world and there are those that will hate you for no other reason than that you look the way you do, or simply for the fact you exist in the form you are, or have the ancestors you have. And this hate may never be fully exposed, but be there none-the-less, lingering in mysterious shadow and never seen. An honest read of this book by my ninth graders allowed some, who felt anger and self-pity in the form of vengful hate, to rise a little out of their cycle of dispare. The greatest revenge, some say, against your oppressor is to live happily. The book shows how a vengeful heart is so self mutilating and unfulfilling. Great Expectations runs the coarse of someone who managed to forgive. It is a moving book and one that gives inner strength and respectful grace and recognition to the divine in all of us. It is better to not get bogged down in a discussion of Dicken's personal life, which is a mixed bag, but just read the book. Why would ultra feminists hate this book? Because they hate. Hateful people will hate a book that so poignantly exposes these wreched people for what they are. The book also shows, most significantly, and contrary to much of the belief of the time, that bad people can reform and become good. The significance of this, and its effect that Dicken's made upon this notion, is as haunting and deep a goodness as the evil Mrs. Havisham placed in Stela's soul.
Rating: 
Summary: Not my cup of tea
Review: Great Expectations is one of Dickens less "weighty" novels. It is slow-moving and at sometimes tedious to read. While the setting and characters are developed well enough to draw you in to the story, the plot is quite unbelievable and the book sometimes tedious at times. The story is about Pip, a young working class boy who comes into great wealth because of a mysterious benefactor. He abandons his good old friends Joe and Biddy to follow his heart towards Ms. Havisham and her cruel daughter Estella. Also dragging along with him are Hubert, his friend and confidant, Magwitch, a filthy convict, Mr. Wopsle, a bad Shakespearean actor, Mr. Jaggers, a vindictive lawyer, Mr. Wemmick- Jagger's more amiable assistant, Molly, a servant with a mysterious past, and Old Orlick, whom you'll know all about at the end of the book. After my first go through, I gave this book a second chance to grow on me and read it again, but it didn't. Unless you are absolutely OBSESSED with Dickens,you are required to read it for a class, and/or you don't have anything to do over a weekend, then don't bother reading this book
Rating: 
Summary: Good. but.......
Review: I studied this book for 2 years in high school and never really read the book itself until a month before my super majorly imprtant exam. Up till then, i was surviving on cliff notes and whatever my tutor said. I had tried to read the book at least a hundred times but fell asleep after the first page. I give this book 4 stars for the fact that dickens is such an AMAZING writer. i'm not saying this coz its a classic. after studying this book for 2 years, you get to know the structure, the language, the relationships between the different plots and sub-plots. and i was BLOWN AWAY by the BRILLIANT way dickens tied everything together. SIMPLY AMAZING I admit, it IS a tiring read. but like what another review said, Great Expectations was meant to be read chapter by chapter, one per week or soemthing like that. the book i read came with a timeline which shows the publication of each chapter. I do recommend this book. just make sure that you're really really awake when you're reading it. pay attention to the details e.g. how the atmosphere reflects the different characters stuff like that. Read it once. and read it AGAIN. i swear the 2nd time you read it, everything will become clearer. Read it a third time and you'll notice how Dickens pulls the novel off. pretty intriguing.
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Summary: Book Review
Review: Great Expectations" by Charles Dickins is a really good book. I personally do not like to read but i truely enjoyed this book. Although the beginning is very slow and Dickins takes forever to get to the point many times, i found myself unable to put the book down at times. Great Expectations is a good book about loyalty, trust and fate. It also teaches you to remember your true friends and do not let wealth go to your head. The story is centered around an orphan boy named "Pip". Miss Havisham is the woman who looks after and takes care of Pip. One day Pip is at the gravesite of his parents and the convict, Magwitch, asks him to help him out. Pip does help the convict out not knowing what Magwitch will do for him in the future.
One day at Miss Havisham's house Pip meets Estella. He falls in love with her but she does not return the feelings. In fact she is cruel and plays with Pip's emotions. Despite the way he is treated by Estella, Pip never gives up on on trying to win her over.
Later on, Pip is told that he has come into a great fortune from an anynomous benefactor. After he comes into all of this money he goes to London, England to study and become a gentleman. While he is in England he becomes somewhat "stuck up". He treats his old friends like they are not as important as his new friends.
While in England he finds out that Estella has married a man who he cannot stand. He also meets up with the convict, Magwitch. Magwitch tells Pip how he is Estella's father and how he is the secret benefactor to his new found wealth. In gratitude, Pip tries to help Magwitch escape from England, but while escaping the police catch them and arrest Magwitch and put him to death, while Pip's money is taken away from him.
Pip goes back to Miss havisham's house and becomes friends with his old friends again. He also meets up with Estella there and after awhile the two marry.This book is well written in the way that everyone can relate to the subjects in some way.
I really enjoyed reading this piece.
Rating:
Summary: Not just a great classic, it's a rollicking good read
Review: There is really no need to recount the plot of this classic - I think most people who are thinking about reading it already know it is a story of poor boy done good and has wrong assumptions about how he comes about it. But despite the storyline being well-worn, there is till so much to get from this story. What comes across most clearly is the theme that nothing comes without strings-attached - Pip's great fortune, that at first looked like manna from on high, turns out to cause more trouble than it is worth. Dickens is a joy to read - his description is masterful, and his ability to paint pictures of his eccentric characters is unsurpassed - the contrasts between the charming Mr Wemmick and the slimy Mr Jaggers; the amazing Miss Havisham; the self important Pumblechook (who I could not stand! Is there any character in literature so annoyingly self-deluded?). My absolute favourite is Joe - his convoluted ways of attempting to pass information onto Pip, his attempts to spare Pip from his evil sister and his localised venacular. The only disappointing characters are the two main ones - Pip comes across as insipid, uninspiring, and frankly undeserving of the fortune that he falls into. Estella is so sketchily drawn that you never get any feel for her, and I think that given how much complexity Dickens manages for some of the minor characters, he could have afforded more to Estella. However, this is a great read. Don't read it just because you fell you 'have to read a classic' - read it because it is a well written story with the right balance of humour and pathos.
Rating:
Summary: A celebration of the middle class
Review: I don't think I'd be giving away much of the plot if I were to say that the story revolves around Pip, a young, middle class orphan who has dreams to be a wealthy, respected gentleman, but has no hope of this as he is a rural blacksmith apprentice. His prospecs change, however, when a mysterious, anonymous benefactor offers to make Pip's dream a reality. I won't give away the ending, but the novel supports Dickens' belief that the middle class is the class to which people should aspire. The plot of this story wasn't to my liking. Dickens' attempts towards the end to wrap all the subplots into one neat little package annoyed me...similar to plot twists in modern Hollywood movies--things so outrageously convienent that it makes one want to roll his eyes. The manner in which things are written, however is fantastic. While the main characters are rather boring, the minor characters, (especially Biddy, Herbert Pocket, and John Wemmick) were much more interesting. Thankfully, Dickens focused on them enough to flesh them out and make them memorable. I would recommend this book, not because I enjoy the plot, but because the writing style is superior and because I, being lower middle class, enjoyed the positive viewpoint Dickens extended concerning my class.
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Summary: WHY?
Review: This book is far better than Harry Potter in my teenage opinion! I had to read it for school just recently, and everyone is complaining how they hate it and its author...I for one think it it has a terrific author, and it's not a boring story at all. Great Expectations is a complicated but easily understood tale with tons of characters that intertwine in surprising ways. The main character is Pip (Philip Pirrip), who lives with his sister and her husband, a blacksmith. Pip at first looks forward to being apprentice to Joe, his brother-in-law, but when he meets Miss Havisham's adopted daughter Estella, he decides he must be umcommon like her and is ashamed of his pathetic home. Then he learns of his great expectations. An unknown benefactor is paying for him to go to London to become a gentleman. Believing it is Miss Havisham, and that Estella will eventually be his wife, Pip is thrilled. But when he discovers that Estella is not meant for him, for his benefactor is a wanted criminal named Magwitch who once threatened his life, Pip is disappointed and sorry for how he deserted Joe and Biddy, the girl back at the forge. He ends up friends with Estella, and lives with his buddy Herbert Pocket and Herbert's wife Clara. That's the book in a nutshell, but you really have to read it. Many of the characters are memorable...Jaggers is the powerful lawyer, Orlick is the mean and nasty man who loved Biddy and wanted to kill Pip just for getting in his way when he tried to secure her, Compeyson is the "other" convict who never speaks in the story but has a huge role, for he hurt Miss Havisham, and so she raised Estella to wreak revenge on all men. Just to make things more confusing, Magwitch is Estella's father and Molly, Jaggers' servant girl, is her mother. Then there are the people who are just plain likable and some of my favorite characters: Wemmick, Jaggers' clerk, his father, The Aged Parent, Miss Skiffins, Wemmick's fiancee, Startop, Pip's pal who was being tutored at the home of Matthew Pocket, Miss Havisham's cousin, and who was just about the nicest guy in the world, and Wopsle, an aspiring but not-so-great actor. THEN there are the evil people who make you kind of mad: Pumblechook, Pip's uncle, who claims to be his benefactor but isn't, the greedy Camilla and Sarah Pocket and other people who want to get on Miss Havisham's good side so they'll get money when she dies, Trabb the tailor's boy, who hates and is jealous of Pip, and Drummle, an all-around highly unpleasant and supposedly fat guy who marries Estella and treats her poorly. GE is a GOOD BOOK and I'm sick of people who probably really like it being afraid to say so.
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Summary: Money From Magwitch
Review: Opinions differ as to whether this or "David Copperfield" was Dickens' most important novel. As my personal favorite remains "Tale of Two Cities," I'll let the GE/DC partisans resolve their differences between themselves. So many different people see "Great Expectations" through their own different prisms. George Orwell saw it as an indictment of the British class system; others have seen it on an essay on the want of money as the root of all evil. I tend to see it in more psychological terms: most of the leading characters, social-climbing Pip above all, are profoundly maladjusted, gripped with obsessions which are ultimately self-destructive. Has anybody wasted her life as wontonly as Miss Havisham? Is it even conceivable Magwitch might blown his Australian fortune in more spectacular fashion? Could Pip's loveless sister choose an emptier existence? And isn't it inevitable that Pip, with all the advantages laid before him, should himself descend into hubris? The saccharine ending of "Great Expectations," tacked on to satisfy a c. 19th form of test audience, is a disappointment -- if there's one lesson Pip should have learnt after all his travails, it is that Estella is an exemplary Woman Who Should Be Stayed Away From. Still, commercial pressures were as severe then as they are now, and for all that, GE still delivers bang for the buck.
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Summary: A deserved classic of coincidence and pace
Review: I love the cover of this edition. The painting seems almost perfect for Dickens novel. But on to the novel itself. "Great Expectations" was the first of Dickens' novels that I read and I had to read several more before I found another I liked anywhere near as much. It is a small work compared to "David Copperfield" and his other massive English comic novels. It is a much darker work, too with less of the comedic touch. Dickens published and/or edited several magazines and some of his novels were first written as serials to bolster flagging circulation, "Great Expectations" is one and it shows. The novel grabs you fast and has a story with many surprises and twists along the way. The one drawback to the earlier serializaztion is that the book probably has too many small climaxes and cliffhangers Like many of the other great novels of the 18th and 19th century a modern reader may well find it a little too full of long descriptive passages. I personally feel that it travels along fast enough that you won't notice. I feel a word or two may be necessary about coincidence in the novel, certainly some other reviewers here at Amazon have felt there was too much. The first thing that should be said is that Dickens readers would not have criticised the coincidence, at the time they had a much firmer belief in "fate" and would have felt that the coincidence showed how much of Pip's tale was fated to be. The other thing worth mentioning is that the coincidence is no less than one can find in quite a lot of modern television if you just explain the plot. We need to ask if the number of coincidences seems unnatural within the book and if the book works. My answer would be that this tale runs along at a fine pace, well written and well worth the read. The coincidence does not detract from the novel. I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants a good, classic read. As one of Dickens shorter works it is also a fine place to start.
Rating: 
Summary: It was the worst of times...
Review: when I read this book. Honestly, after I liked "A Tale of Two Cities" I was expecting more from Dickens. Maybe Dickens wrote in the style of his time, which was to be very detailed, but it really doesn't translate well to today. I don't mind long books (I'm reading War and Peace now) but this book went into extreme detail about the most meaningless things. This story was essentially a Victorian soap opera. Theres all sorts of unknown parents, secret coniving, mysterious benefactors, and worst of all, many unrealistic characters. This book was so contrived and unnatural that I really don't see how it's attained "classic" status. If you don't mind meticulous attention being payed to the minutia, which is Dickens's style, then I'd recommend "A Tale of Two Cities." If not, there are many other authors much better than Dickens that you can read.
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