The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby Paperback – May 31, 2018

Oh, the beauty and the agony tears at me as I think about this stunning story. The characters are vivid and the settings so well written that I was transported to the graveyard alongside young Pip and his convict, fear streaking through me as it was for that small boy torn by a near-impossible decision. And I’m there with Pip and kind-hearted Joe in the forge. I can feel the fire on my skin and taste hot metal on the back of my tongue. In my mind, I hear the crackling of the decades-old crinoline of Miss Havisham’s skirts rustling against the marble floors of the mausoleum she calls home. Amid the stopping of Miss Havisham’s clock, the cool radiance that is Estella vibrates from the pages, bringing her to life.If you haven’t read <i>Great Expectations</i>, I encourage you to do so. Yes, it was first published in 1861, and the syntax is more eloquent than that we’ve become accustomed to, but once this tale grabs hold, you will forget the language and year it was written and be all in with these new friends. The love, the heartbreak and the lessons still hold true today. Some choices, once made, can leave long-reaching scars on the hearts of those we never knew we touched. A good deed can ripple through time to places never imagined. The consequences of our actions must be accounted for, and there will always be outcomes we could never have anticipated.<i>Great Expectations</i> is the real deal! The deliciously-satisfying prose is the whipped cream on the proverbial sundae that is Dickens. The plot and subplots (and sub-subplots) are astounding! The way he can weave this tangled web yet keep the interest of the reader while giving nothing away until the perfect moment … and BAM! He has you, and you sigh with the perfection of it all.You’ve missed a gorgeous piece of literature if you don’t dive into this book.

This is a TERRIBLE abridgment. Going off the reviews, I thought this would work for my students as an abridgment of the classic for their summer reading, and I honestly thought it might be the same one I used to use when teaching it during the school year from an out of print textbook. I WAS SO WRONG. This abridgment leaves out key things that make the parts it leaves in impossible to understand if you aren't already familiar with the story. I am SO embarrassed that I suggested parents buy this catastrophe of an abridgment. The publishers should be ashamed of the way they have butchered this classic.

Some chapters really have nothing to do with the story about Nickolas and his family; the coincidences are really implausible, and sometimes it seems that Dickens can not really figure out what to do. (One bad guy is killed in a duel that has nothing to do with the plot. At least he did not have a piano fall on him.)But for all that, Dickens is one of the world's great story-tellers and you will find yourself wanting to know what is going to happen to Nicholas and his family as they go through some really bad years of their lives. (Spoiler alert: They all live happily ever after.) Also, you will learn a lot about London in the early to middle 19th century. It is entertaining and well worth reading.

I avoided reading books by Charles Dickens because I thought the old style of English would be too tough to work through and keep my interest. I was wrong. I waited 64 years before I figured this out. Maybe I needed to wait until this before I could appreciate his work.It is basically a story of a young orphan boy, named Pip, coming of age in the mid- 19th century. It is a life full of characters both good, bad and in between. The main thrust though is how theses characters all affect young Pip's beliefs; fears and... great expectations. As he grows he finds that many are not what he originally thought them to be. However, they are what they are. The story is about how Pip learns to deal with them and life's twist and turns.It is really a good book. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. It is tough to read in a few spots but you can still get the context and keep the story moving along. I highly recommend this book, but you will have to decide if you are old enough to appreciate it. Just don't wait too long...