To Be a Gentleman! Young Pip, an orphan boy, apprenticed to the village blacksmith, yearns to be a gentleman. Suddenly a mysterious person wills him a fortune and he leaves his village to be educated as a rich gentleman. Pip longs to marry Estella, beautiful ward of the eccentric Miss Havisham. But Pip's new life is shattered by the re-appearance of Magwitch, a convict who once forced him to steal. Will Magwitch's demands spell the end of Pip's 'great expectations'. . . .?

This book turned out to be more fun to read than I had originally anticipated. A large part of that was because of the writing. This is one of Dickens’ later books, which I know from reading the inside flap, and I would guess that Dickens’ acquired experience in writing was a great contribution to the style of this book. It was, overall, very clever, and that cleverness was by turns amusing, beautiful, and incredibly apt.

I first noticed this cleverness in the beginning of the book, where I often found myself laughing out loud. As the plot got underway, this same sort of cleverness worked itself into characters and descriptions and all sorts of other aspects of the story, so that everything seemed exceedingly well-painted and true to life. The beautiful comes in with some of the descriptions, like this one of the Thames River as the characters are rowing through it:

“The night was dark by this time… what light we had, seemed to come more from the river than the sky, as the oars in their dipping struck at a few reflected stars.”

Needless to say, I have great respect for Dickens’ writing abilities.

The plot was slow at times, especially in the middle, but it definitely had its moments. And when it had those moments, they were very exciting. Maybe they were even more so because I got used to the slower parts and was surprised when they abruptly changed. I also noticed, one night when I was looking for a place to stop in order to get some sleep, whenever I got to the end of a chapter or some other suitable place, there was some incident or plot point that made me say “just a little more” again and again. Although this feeling didn’t last throughout the book, it’s something that I love to see whenever I read.

I can not deny that I found myself actively engaged with this book. I wasn’t always happy with the characters, I didn’t always like them, but I experienced a lot of feelings as I read, and often very strong opinions to go with them. If anyone ever wants to have a conversation centered around this book, I'm sure I'd have a lot to say about it.

So, all in all, this was a pretty good book. I'd recommend it.

Summary: Young Pip, an orphan boy, apprenticed to the village blacksmith, yearns to be a gentleman.Suddenly a mysterious person wills him a fortune and he leaves his village to be educated as a rich gentleman.The reappearance of a convict who once forced him to steal shatters his new life.