This is an exciting retelling of the story of naïve, ambitious Pip who is so caught-up in the promise of his ‘great expectations’ that he turns snobbishly against dear blacksmith Joe, his childhood protector. That, to me, is the relationship in the story that matters most. Yet, to Pip, it his love for steely cold Estella, warped by the disappointed life of Miss Haversham who Pip supposes is the source of his suddenly gentlemany life with no trade to follow but a great deal of debt. We readers, along with Pip, are thrown when we discover that Pip’s benefactor is actually the scary convict Magwich who Pip had helped when a boy at the story’s opening.
This strange story of bitterness, revenge, snobbery and control, played out with moments of huge drama and a cast of deliciously, mostly awful, characters, is cleverly streamlined by Tanya Landman. We gallop enjoyably through the action, forever led-on by promises and fears and hope. This version is written with those with a reading age of 9+ in mind, yet is a full-blooded reading experience for fluent reading people into adulthood. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It’s wonderful that great stories can be filleted into relatively easy reads, accessible to so many more readers.
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