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    Great Expectations
    Great Expectations
    Great Expectations
    Audiobook16 hours

    Great Expectations

    Written by Charles Dickens

    Narrated by Frank Muller

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Many people are put off by the sheer length of Charles Dickens' novels. Great Expectations is one of the most accessible of his works. If you've been unwilling to try Dickens before, this is the place to start! In what may be Dickens's best novel, humble, orphaned Pip is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman - and one day, under sudden and enigmatic circumstances, he finds himself in possession of "great expectations." In this gripping tale of crime and guilt, revenge and reward, the compelling characters include Magwitch, the fearful and fearsome convict; Estella, whose beauty is excelled only by her haughtiness; and the embittered Miss Havisham, an eccentric jilted bride
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 21, 2008
    ISBN9781440780721
    Author

    Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is the most popular and, many believe, the greatest English author. He wrote many classic novels, including David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and A Christmas Carol. Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities are available from Brilliance Audio.

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    Reviews for Great Expectations

    4/5

    7,372 ratings210 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Read by a great narrator and wonderfully written story. Timeless classic.
    • 3/5
      Pip is a poor orphan boy growing up in poverty being raised by his sister and her blacksmith husband. Pip's life takes an unexpected turn when he encounters an escaped convict. When Pip helps the man by stealing food for him, the convict never forgets this small act of (coerced) kindness.Later, Pip learns to envy the lives of gentlemen when he becomes a regular visitor at the home of Miss Havisham - an eccentric lady who spends her life nursing the pain of being crossed in love decades ago. In order to exact revenge on the male sex, Miss Havisham has raised her own orphan child - this one a girl - in order that she may jilt every young lover she has. This girl, Estella, is cruel to Pip and makes him feel that his common upbringing is something to be ashamed of. Pip falls in love with her.Later, a mysterious benefactor arrives on the scene and pays to have Pip raised and educated as a gentleman. Pip moves away from the only home he has known and believes his dreams to be coming true. He becomes an independent gentleman and hopes to win Estella's love now that he has risen in the world.But, alas! He soon learns that his benefactor is not Miss Havisham as he has always supposed, but the convict that he once helped as a child. Now Pip is in danger of losing everything, especially the love of Estella who jilts him properly and marries the worst man she can find. Pip is torn in two by his duty to the convict and his disdain for the origin of his fortune. In the end, the convict is caught and dies in prison and Pip goes into business with a friend for many years. A chance meeting in the ruins of Miss Havisham's house brings him into contact with Estella again. She is divorced and destitute now and has decided that she made a terrible mistake in jilting Pip. Though not quite ending with their marriage, it is strongly hinted at.This book is weird. I didn't get the central relationship. Pip is not in love with Estella, he is obsessed with her. She tells him to his face that she is a sociopath and can't love anyone, but definitely doesn't love him in particular, and this has no effect on Pip. He doesn't care that she doesn't love him, he still wants to marry her. Nevermind the fact that she has been nothing but shrewishly awful to him his entire life. Is it really in Pip's character to be this masochistic? Is he such a complete egomaniac that he wants to be joined forever to a woman incapable of emotion? I guess that's what Dickens would have us believe.And if one is a sociopath, that hardly means one would expose oneself to the worst possible life. It wasn't clear to me why Estella should want to marry anyone. Much less the worst man she could meet. She could just go on attending parties and jilting people. And then, I guess a bunch of years of a bad marriage somehow taught her to experience human emotion? How? She was raised for years in a morbidly abusive home by Miss Havisham and that did nothing for her. Is there a certain amount or level of abuse that engenders feelings? The ending was too pat. Too easy.
    • 5/5
      Excellent narration once I got used to his style and rhythm!
    • 4/5
      I spent my whole adult life thinking I’d read this book in Jr High school - but this month it was my book club’s selection and I discovered that the first few chapters seemed very familiar; the rest was a total surprise, clearly I’d only started the book as a kid. Anyway, an amazing story and I’m glad I read it now.
    • 5/5
      A favorite book. I read it in 8th grade and most everyone else hated it, but I was enthralled! I could relate to Pip somehow.
    • 4/5
      After being forced to read parts of The Tale of Two Cities in high school, I’d convinced myself that I couldn’t stand Dickens. After reading this book, I can definitely say that I was wrong. I very much enjoyed this book, its story, and the characters.
    • 5/5
      "I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude."

      One of the many quotes I liked from this book, but this one really spoke to me for some reason. Probably because it's semi-haunting. Compared to other Dickens books that I'v read so far this one is the best written.

      I'm very happy this was better than Oliver Twist. You can't really compared the two, but I really don't like Oliver Twist. This book made up for that one though. The character I liked far better. Pip I liked better because he's telling the story, but he also seemed more aware of what was going on. I also really liked Miss Havisham, she stole the show, she was on fire (okay bad joke).

      If you're looking for a semi-Gothic and semi-crime novel, this is a good choice. I was in fact looking for something with a little crime and something that was Gothic, but not too Gothic.
    • 2/5
      It was okay. I think its themes are meant more for a YA audience.
    • 1/5
      I did not finish reading this book. It just felt like an eternity every so often. And while I sometimes caught a sliver of enjoyable writing, the premise had never hooked me enough to now keep going. I think I've had enough at least for now.
    • 5/5
      I took a buzz-feed quiz on which classic novel I should read and got this. 1) The cover is beautiful. 2) I thought Miss Havisham was a ghost the entire story. I loved Estella the most as a character. She proves that every individual has the ability to love; despite their background. One of my favorites.
    • 3/5
      Better toward the end than at the beginning. Listening to it through tedium was better than trying to read it for myself.
    • 2/5
      I remember my mother expressing surprise that Dickens wasn't read in any of my college English classes. I can't think of a single graduate student in or around my cohort who worked on him either, yet I knew he was one of my grandfather's favorites and that Dickens was very popular in his day. In sum, I think this is a fairytale style of prose that's gone out of fashion (and for good reason). Everyone in the novel is an exaggerated caricature. It makes for very predictable dialogue and a static, boring plotline. There's an interesting central idea: Does the source of wealth matter and does money change a person? The examination of this question is fairly surface level for a work of nearly five-hundred pages. I'm content to have had the experience of reading one of his more famous novels, but I would only recommend Dickens to someone interested in that particular time/place in the history of England and English Literature.
    • 4/5
      It took longer to get invested in than some of Dickens's other works, but by the end I did care what happened to the various characters.
    • 3/5
      A sensible chuckle. I was surprised to see how little humour has changed and how old the "old jokes" really are. Poor Pip, forever blueballed.
    • 3/5
      Recognisably Dickensian in all the ways I remembered, perhaps 30 years after my first Dickens novels. I was not bowled over the way I was in freshman seminar, but well-enough pleased and the specific title was decided by R's school assignment so I'm content with that, too. Great Expectations points up Dickens's clear-eyed insight into the hearts of neglected if not destroyed children. I broadly recall a similar outlook in other novels, and it may not even be particularly manifest here. That deep psychology into other people (people different than me, and yet recognisable) registered then and now as a key characteristic of the modern novel.No doubt influenced by my reading in noir, I found in the central plot a mystery without a sleuth; Dickens's own asides the same role as the shamus's distracting tough talk in Chandler, Hammett, Macdonald.The fact that every character is in the end found to be connected to all others (Six Degrees of Pip Pirrip), amused me and more or less was expected, but R found it almost infuriating. Great Expectations has a clearer message than I recall from Bleak House or Little Dorrit, as though Dickens imagined characters and situations as a means to assess the myriad ways Pip might delude himself: class or caste, public acceptance or accolade, wealth or comfort -- all manner of outer appearance, in other words, in contrast with inner meaning. The sheer variety of it all, and the cast of characters with their idiosyncracies, kept it interesting.Uncertain whether I will next re-read one of the three novels from that freshman seminar, or pick another novel. My initial impression 30 years ago stands, Dickens is worth reading.//Favourite characters: Wemmick, Herbert Pocket, Havisham, Jaggers -- and Satis House. (I wonder if Peake thought of it when writing Gormenghast.)
    • 1/5
      Not my cup of tea.
    • 5/5
      One of the best novels ever written.
    • 5/5
      Required reading for being a human. Also it's epic.
    • 5/5
      Although lengthy, this book was hard to put down. Amazing characters all with unique personality and plot twists I didn't see coming. This book had a lot of humor in it surprisingly! And it had me laughing for 5 minutes straight. Pip living through hardship and experiencing family deaths at such a young age is bound to get someone down. But it never did get him down. He was a hard worker and always polite to his surroundings. Although he despised Mr. Pumblechook's claims of raising Pip up to the man he is today, he never snapped or said wrong things to him. His sister did more works in his life than he ever thought she did, she taught him well and he starts to realize it towards the end. (God rest Mrs. Joe Gargery's soul.) The ending is bittersweet yet happy. Turning over a new leaf at the end. I loved this book more than I thought I would and I'm happy I experienced it after years of it sitting on my shelf. (also my favorite character was Herbert, he's such a nice boy.)
    • 4/5
      Bit slow in parts. Since it was originally published in installments it has peaks and valleys. It pay better to have the story be longer. The ending is fitting
    • 3/5
      Charles Dickens' classic of unrequited love, and failures of communication. Pip grows up without an understanding of where his situation in Victorian england comes from, and later suffers in his quest for understanding who he really is. A tearjerker by modrn standards, and certainly lacks the fairy tale ending that dickens must have tired of by 1861.
    • 5/5
      Second time reading this - the first was in high school. First published as a serial in a magazine, I can see how it would have been very popular. It has a little bit of everything in it - adventure, crime, coming-of-age, love gothic and humor!
    • 5/5
      Great book. "You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose..." Perfect. I think I've read it four times, but I'm sure I'll read it again.
    • 1/5
      This could be listed with the subtitle of "The Misadventures of Pip." It's interesting, though not something that caught me to focus on it.If I'm understanding this correctly, Joe was abused by an alcoholic father and as such married an abusive woman to take the place of the abusive father. This is not openly displayed in the text, per se, but it is discussed by the narrator on a few occasions. This felt like a book written and published in stages, so the various parts feel a little stilted when pushed together. Though to bring the file up again did connect them some. Also the whole deal with the dying of Ms. Havernsham is kinda creepy.Something I did have to keep correcting myself in my mind was that the use of certain words has changed mightily since this was written. When someone asks is he an intimate, this isn't referring to a date, but to a close friend, for instance.I noted that unless he's given them no first name, Dickens has a habit of referring to characters by their title and first name. Mr. and Mrs. Joe. Mr. and Ms. Cecelia. It's a touch unnerving.I've gotten just about past the half way point. My loan expires tomorrow. I'm not looking to renew. The story isn't real compelling to me, and the "Great Expectations" are two fold: what Pip expects of himself and what others expect of Pip. This is definitely a long winded fictional biography. I'm not into biographies most times. Might be why this isn't my type of book.
    • 4/5
      I'm quite impressed with this book, read for a F2F book group. By this point in Dickens' writing career, he is less intrigued with cartoonish, humorous caricatures of people and more involved in the depth of their personalities. Joe, the simple but loving blacksmith who is unhappily married to Pip's sister, Estelle, and Miss Havisham have all finally received reasons and intrigue and a backstory to explain themselves.The basic story is a tale of an orphaned boy who lives with his b*tch of a sister and her husband near the marshes of Kent. He stumbles upon an escaped fugitive one night who terrifies him and colors his childhood for many years. Time passes, schooling might start (or not), and Pip meets the odd Miss Havisham who lives on abandoned home and brewery with her ward, Estelle. Pip spends almost as much time there as at school, and events at home include his sister and her alliance with narrow-minded townsfolk.As Pip grows older, his heart remains compassionate towards Joe, towards Estelle, and towards the strange Herbert, despite Pip's abuse at his sister's hands. She is beaten during a robbery and left without an ability to speak, while Pip is sent off to London to claim his inheritance. What gives this book its depth is that Pip has "great expectations" about where his new-found fortune originates, how much more richly he can live, and yet nothing becomes as it seems. Herbert and he become fast friends; Herbert knows the backstory for Miss Havisham; Pip's personal lawyer, Mr. Wemmick is a different person at home and at the office; and finally Pip's personal benefactor becomes a central character.Definitely one of Dickens' best writings, and worth the time put into it.
    • 5/5
      Speechless...!
    • 4/5
      A poor boy is promised to inherit a fortune.4/4 (Great).Pip is usually unsympathetic, but there are enough lovable secondary characters, and enough twists and suspense, to keep the book enjoyable, and to make a lasting impression.
    • 5/5
      What on earth can you say? Pip!
    • 4/5
      This is classic Dickens. I know he uses a lot of words, but he tells tales of the human condition with such humor and compassion. My favorite characters were Joe Gargery and Wemmick. Wemmick was particularly endearing with his "aged P" and his life away from work. So glad I persevered and finished it.
    • 5/5
      This is another one of my favorites of Dickens'! I have no clue when I read this one but the whole story of Pip really touched me. There were moments I thought he was a fool, but the vast majority of the time I really empathized with him. It's another classic example of Dickens' atmospheric style and wit coming together for an altogether great novel.