Great Expectations

⚖The case for it

A boy visiting his parents' graves on the marsh is seized by an escaped convict, and Dickens has you inside four sentences. Then Satis House: stopped clocks, a rotting wedding feast, and a woman who has refused to let time proceed, whom readers call "one of my favorite characters to ever appear." Estella tells Pip plainly she has nothing to give him, which is more interesting than any obstacle a lesser book would invent. Jaggers menaces, Wemmick keeps a moated toy fortress at home, and Joe holds the moral center throughout. Written in weekly installments, it moves. And it is funny: "Charles Dickens is funnier than 90% of Netflix's most recent standup releases."

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Pip comes into money and becomes ashamed of the blacksmith who raised him, which readers find harder to forgive than Dickens seems to. Before that comes the childhood section on the marsh, where people stall for months. The plot then leans on coincidence hard enough that everyone turns out related to everyone: "kept having to remind myself what the plot was." Paid by the installment, Dickens padded, and readers notice: "too many words, too many pages," a "book is a hundred pages too long," then a finish where the "plot suddenly sped up from leisurely pace to Indy 500 race." One verdict files it as "Oliver Twist 2.0 with a first person narrator."

— the honest librarian

10h

honest hours

14

sittings