Great Expectations

So yesterday, I finally finished The Uncommercial Traveller. No, it didn't take that long to read, it just kept not holding my attention and although I was supposed to have been done ages ago, well, I wasn't. There was still some good bits right through to the end, but well, it was interspersed with bits I skimmed over, didn't really read or register. I'm sorry, but when he's preachy or trying to be too clever, I just get bored.

The good news is, the moment I clicked out of Uncommercial Traveller and ran through the selection of his books I have yet to read, I decided on (as you probably guessed from the title of this post), Great Expectations.

I thought I'd just read the beginning, you know, the bit everyone knows, where Pip is standing at the churchyard, admiring his parents' and brothers' graves (a row of little lozenges) and starting to cry when the convict caught him and terrified the bejeezus out of the little dude (incidentally, this particular passage is gone through in great detail in Robert Olen Butler's "From Where You Dream" book on writing) when I found I couldn't put it down.

I read the first 50 pages (the last time I read Great Expectations was nearly 20 years ago) so I didn't remember most of the story. I remember that Joe was nice and that Pip's red-faced sister who was "bringing him up by hand" was not, and that Pip hated (OK, there is no softer word for it, though for a child to use that word at that age would have been considered 'wicked' so he uses a lot of other words instead, but it comes to the same thing).

So I read about Pip stealing the food and Joe's file for the convict, getting it out to him, being terrified at lunch in case his sister discover the loss and know it was him, the chase given by the soldiers to recapture the convicts, the fact that the convicts were supposed to be on a ship called The Hulk...Pip learning to write and trying to teach Joe, Joe, only knowing the two letters J and O...his learning had been impeded by his father's drinking...

It was way past midnight and young Arnold, whom I'd been cuddling, disengaged himself and went to settle himself on the sofa. The light was bothering him. Before that he had been sleeping against the front door, a sure fire sign that he wanted to go out and, engrossed in my new book, I had ignored him.

So I opened the front door, that worthy made his way off the sofa (no, he shouldn't have been on there in the first place) and staggered out. I sat on the neighbour's culvert, swatted mosquitoes, and read on. The iPad is about the only thing it is comfortable to read under the street lamps. The road was wet.

One of the neighbour's seemed to be having a party. The house was shuttered, there were no cars parked haphazard all over the road, as there are when the others have a party, but loud voices and loud laughter issued from it.

Arnold stopped for a bit, uncertain, and looked in the direction of the noise. Then he took off, and I sat on the sloping culvert and read on, looking up every so often to see if he were coming back. It was late, I was tired, but that's how engrossing the book was. I laughed out loud at the sight of Pip's little letter, all misspelled, which Joe was so inordinately proud of.

And then I heard the patter of little feet and my little black dog emerged from the darkness, running towards home, mouth open, tongue hanging out, a loose doggie smile playing upon his lips. He aimed straight for the gate, so I went in after him, shut it, locked up the house, and then he headed straight for his bed.

I locked the door, put away the iPad and went to sleep. I was supposed to have taken off early in the morning for JB. Instead, I slept in a little (a lot) longer and took off late.

I have a feeling it's not going to take me so long to read Great Expectations. The story is riveting from the word "go". I can't wait to see what happens next. Which is what I've found with all his novels, but not so much his non-fiction.

But maybe that's just me.

A real Dickens connoisseur would appreciate it all, down to the last letter.