“If most Dickens novels are symphonies, “Great Expectations” is a string quartet. In a minor key. Probably by Schubert. The book is one of his shortest; it’s taut as a noose, and this dark fable glows like an emerald bracelet coiled around Estella’s ivory wrist.

Pip is all of us. Who among us has reached maturity untouched by similar yearnings, embarrassments, ambitions? And who among us has not seen the bitter ghost of Miss Havisham flickering behind his pupils as he pondered...”

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