Rating: 5/5
!!**THIS REVIEW SORT OF CONTAINS SPOILERS**!!
When Philip “Pip” Pirrip first visits the ghostly Miss Havisham’s manor and sees her beautiful adopted daughter Estella, he falls in love with her instantly. Follow Pip’s eventful life as he journeys through a pre-Victorian world of love, jealousy and murder.
I really really enjoyed this book. Dickens’ way of writing is practically impeccable. Here are a few extracts which I thought were particularly good/funny (bearing in mind that these were only a few!):
“When he said, ‘Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?’ the old gentleman, not in the least knowing what point of the ceremony we had arrived at, stood most amiably beaming at the ten commandments. Upon which, the clergyman said again, ‘WHO giveth this woman to be married to this man?’ The old gentleman being still in a state of most estimable unconsciousness, the bridegroom cried out in his accustomed voice, ‘Now Aged Parent, you know; who giveth?’ To which the Aged replied with great briskness, before saying that he gave, ‘All right, John, all right, my boy!’ And the clergyman came to so gloomy a pause upon it, that I had doubts for the moment whether we should get completely married that day.”
(Writing a letter): “It was necessary for Joe to hold on heavily to the table with his left elbow, and to get his right leg well out behind him, before he could begin, and when he did begin he made every down-stroke so slowly that it might have been six feet long, while at every up-stroke I could hear his pen spluttering extensively. He had a curious idea that the inkstand was on the side of him where it was not, and constantly dipped his pen into space, and seemed quite satisfied with the result.”
“‘…leaving a cool four thousand [pounds] to Matthew Pocket. … And a cool four thousand, Pip!’ I never discovered from whom Joe derived the conventional temperature of the four thousand pounds, but it appeared to make the sum of money more to him, and he had a manifest relish in insisting on its being cool.”
“‘Miss Georgiana, she have twenty pound down. Mrs.—what’s the name of them wild beasts with humps, old chap?’ ‘Camels?’ said I, wondering why he could possibly want to know. Joe nodded. ‘Mrs. Camels,’ by which I presently understood he meant Camilla, ‘she have five pound…’
“‘Did you hear that he was dead, Joe?’ I presently asked, with increasing diffidence.
‘Which? Him as sent the bank-notes, Pip?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think,’ said Joe, after meditating a long time, and looking rather evasively at the window-seat, ‘as I did hear tell that how he were something or another in a general way in that direction.'”
In short, I really really liked it.