Posts Tagged ‘charles dickens’

Great Expectations is one of Charles Dickens’ longest novels and tells the story of Pip as he grows up and becomes a man. It is narrated in the first person and has a good balance of happy endings, and death.

It’s only the second Dickens novel I have read. However, I have seen a lot of the films, especially ones with Muppets in, and as any literary buff knows, that is just as good as reading the book. Thus my only comparison is A Tale of Two Cities. I found this one more engaging as a novel overall; it held my interest better. However, some of the most memorable section of Two Cities outshines Great Expectations for its gritty realism and vivid descriptions.

If you take a look at Wikipedia’s list of best-selling books of all time, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens comes right at the top. Of course, it was published over 150 years ago, so who can say where Fifty Shades of Grey will be after a similar time has lapsed…

It also shares a very similar name with the Leeds-based food blog A Tale of Two Sittings. I am not sure whether it is a deliberate reference to the book, or whether the blog pre-dates the novel and Dickens was making a reference to the blog. More research is needed.

Dickens tells the tale of a small cast of characters and their jet-setting lifestyle between London and Paris, both before and during the French Revolution. It takes quite a while to get into. I think I got to about half way through the book, still wondering what it was actually about. Of course it all comes together in the end though to form a beautiful tapestry of interwoven stories that culminate in what is probably a happy ending. Ignoring the tens of thousands that went to the guillotine of course…