Great Expectations [Mass Market Paperback]

Deborah Chiel (Adapter, Author), Charles Dickens (Author)

Book Description

Series: Great Expectations | Publication Date: January 1998

When fisherman Jimmy Bell, a painter in his spare time, receives a call that could change his life forever and make all his dreams come true, he decides to take a chance, until certain truths come to light and threaten to destroy his dream, in a story based on the novel by Charles Dickens. Original. Movie tie-in."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This is a novelization of a screenplay loosely based on Charles Dickens's 19th-century coming-of-age drama. It's set in modern times, and it's less closely related to the old book than to the big-screen drama of the same name featuring bookish Hollywood heartthrob Ethan Hawke--star of Dead Poets Society and author of the novel The Hottest State--and Gwyneth Paltrow. Though the actors are not literally described, you can feel their star power lurking behind the workaday prose. The hero is a penniless modern artist named Bell who rises from Florida to the New York art world, where he courts a cool beauty named Estella (Paltrow).

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312963033
• ISBN-13: 978-0312963033
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #431,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars not a bad read but nothing special, August 13, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Great Expectations (Mass Market Paperback)

I saw the movie and was captivated by it. The way it was filmed and especially the acting of the cast.I just had to live it again. Although the book isnt bad it fails to keep you captivated (in my humble opinion)like the movie did. I especially found irritating that Deborah Chiel had changed the name of one of the main characters.Although in the recent version of the film Pip is replaced by Fin - which aint all that bad a resemblence considering the story was set in a most recent time and we needed a more todays name- but the author found it necessary to even change that name and calling the charracter Jimmy or somehting. Anyway I have read more works by Deborah and frankly I expected more of her.In my opinion she failed to get the atmoshpere that was in the movie in her book.Still all in all it was readable.

4.0 out of 5 stars MORE ESTELL A FOR THE BUCK!, January 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Great Expectations (Mass Market Paperback)

With the movie now comming out in theatres, I was curious to read the modern day version of this classic tale. Now I am reading the Real McCoy by Dickens, but from reading the online reviews on the Dickens story I have conclued this: This version is not bad. It's not the classic story, but I think we all have come to "exspect" that from movies...I found that readers from the classic tale were themselves, were yearning for more Estella, well here YOU GET IT! She is throughout this book, and when she's not there, she's being thought of! The chracter's names have been changed (except Estella) and the story has been modernized, but I found this version to be "intriging", it's a quick read...(I read it in 2 nights), it's simple, and the chracters are well described. If you're looking for a light, interesting read, this may be for you, however if your looking for an easy way out of reading the real Great Exspectations for school, or if your a fan of Dickens and looking for this book to do his novel justice...YOU WON'T FIND IT HERE!

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "She'll Only Break Your Heart...It's a Fact...", November 17, 2005

By 

R. M. Fisher "Raye" (New Zealand = Middle Earth!) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Great Expectations (Mass Market Paperback)

First things first: this is *not* the novel "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens. This is the novelization of the movie based on the book by Charles Dickens, a reworking of his famous novel set in the 1980s starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke, and directed by the fantabulous Alfonso Cuaron, who made "A Little Princess" such an exceptionally beautiful film and reinvigorated the Harry Potter franchise with his dark take of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban". Though the "Great Expectations" movie was critically ill-received, and many Dickens-fans balked at the updating of the characters and time-period, I thoroughly enjoyed the film - though there were several flaws, it was based on a brilliant idea, was impeccably acted (and I'm not usually a big fan of either Paltrow or Hawke) and was visually beautiful in Cuaron's gorgeous cinematography and art direction, a hallmark of all his films.

Like most movies these days, distributors commissioned an adaptation of the film into book-form, a task given to Deborah Chiel who does an adequate, if not rather bland job. The story follows the basic storyline of Charles Dickens' novels; a young man aids an escaped convict, falls in love with a beautiful woman beyond his reach, comes into some money from a mysterious source and gets an inflated ego when he finds success in the big city. Here Jimmy Bell (called Pip in Dickens, and Finn in the movie - don't ask me why it was changed for a third time) is a young boy living on the coast of Florida, living with his aunt Maggie and uncle Joe (again there is another change as I believe the movie portrayed Maggie as his sister; Chiel writes her as his mother's sister).

Two meetings take place in Jimmy's childhood that will change his life forever; one is with an escaped convict who demands food from the terrified young boy, the second is with Mrs Nora Dinsmoor who requests his company for her young adopted daughter Estella. It only takes one glimpse of Estella for Jimmy to fall totally in love with her, but she has been raised by the tragic Mrs Dinsmoor (who was abandoned on her wedding day), to be a cruel heartbreaker, acting as Mrs Dinsmoors' revenge on a world of men. The book mainly focuses on Jimmy's experiences with Estella in three main periods of their lives: childhood, teenager hood and adulthood, as Estella taunts and teases him throughout his life.

On receiving an anonymous fortune brought to him via a lawyer, Jimmy rekindles his talent in painting and heads off to New York, the centre of the art world. Hoping to find both success and Estella, Jimmy immerses himself into his work and gets caught up in New York life - and the acquaintances he had long thought he'd left behind (Estella, Mrs Dinsmoor and the convict) remerge in his life in the most unexpected ways...

Writing a synopsis for this book is rather difficult considering the density of the subject matter. It is not so much a book about events, but people, relationships and the way in which they interact with each other - sometimes with kindness, often with manipulation. Somewhat unfortunately, Chiel only narrates the bare bones of the story, neglecting to go into detail on the deep psychological issues involved amongst the main characters. One of the faults of the movie was the randomness with which Estella seemed to go about her business - obviously it was the work of a damaged mind, but no exploration is given to her character during the course of the film. A novelization could have cleared this up a little, but no such thing occurs and Estella remains distant; some of this is undoubtedly the fault of the script Chiel based her work on, but surely there was room for a little dramatic liberty?

Some of the passages can be a bit trite, for example: "All his hopes for the future seemed to go unmet. How dared he to expect anything more than what destiny had decreed to be his fate?" and other ideas make no sense: Uncle Joe and his second wife apparently see similarities between their son and Jimmy, even though Joe isn't Jimmy biological uncle and his newborn cousin therefore genetically unrelated to him.

However, the main problem has nothing to do with Chiel at all, and that is the utter impossibility of translating the beauty of the film onto the page. Perhaps the reason the film resonated so strongly with me was its visual splendour; such as the dense, concentrated *green* of Mrs Dinsmoors' overgrown estate, where overgrown wedding paraphernalia lies abandoned on the overgrown lawn, beams of sunlight break through the canopy and a ladybird lands on Jimmy's wrist "like a jewel". The intoxicating visions that Cuaron dreams up for us simply cannot be captured in print.

Yet for all these faults, this novelization (much like the movie) somehow gets under your skin. The characters and their circumstances are endlessly intriguing - though I suspect it is the ghost of Charles Dickens' genius still at work behind his literary creations. Jimmy and Estella, Joe and Mrs Dinsmoor, the lonely figure of the virtually unknown Lustig - they resonate throughout the mind and are utterly unforgettable.

Some criticism toward the movie was levelled at the ending, which was perceived as rather weak - I however thought it was a beautiful way to unite the long-parted lovers, not with a dramatic burst of action, but a slow and simple coming together amongst the remnants of the past, much like the calm after a storm. I was happy to see that Chiel follows this ending, and furthermore adds in echoes of Dickens' own literary ending, which deepens its beauty further.

Though I recommend the movie more than this novel, it's not a wasted read and somehow both together give me an even greater appreciation for Dickens' original work.