‘Great Expectations’

When Charles Dickens’ weekly magazine, All the Year Round, was going through a circulation slump in 1860, his friend Wilkie Collins had an idea: Write a mystery.

It came naturally because Collins already was thinking through the idea and plot that would result in his 1868 book, “The Moonstone,” the first detective novel in English fiction. As he had in previous books, Dickens decided to pour much of his painful childhood experience into his new book, and, taking Collins’ suggestion, he added the mystery that makes “Great Expectations” so compelling: Who was Pip’s benefactor?

Dickens published “Great Expectations” week by week in his magazine over 1860-1861, and it was such a sensational success that it revived the publication. It was later a best seller in book form.

By listening to “Great Expectations” on audio cassettes, you have something in common with those very first readers of the work--the magazine subscribers.

Those readers had to wait for the next week’s issue to find out the latest twist in this marvelous plot. They could not flip ahead in the book, as some readers of mysteries are tempted to do.

And as you listen to the mystery unfold on tape, you’re a captive, too.

Good luck on fast-forwarding to just the right spot to satisfy your curiosity about certain elements of the plot. You’re just going to have to put yourself in Dickens’ hands and enjoy every minute of the nearly 20 hours of this unabridged reading.

Does 20 hours sound like a lot of listening? Here’s a tip: You’ll find yourself wishing it would never end.

“Great Expectations,” in my opinion, is Dickens’ most disciplined work, and the credit again goes to Collins, who kept Dickens from going off on some of the delightful--but distracting--tangents that distinguish some of Dickens’ other works. And surely the characters in “Great Expectations” are the greatest collection in all of English fiction. On audio cassette, they are brought to life magnificently by British actor Martin Jarvis for Cover to Cover Cassettes Inc. of Wiltshire, England.

He’ll hook you early on, in Chapter 8, when Pip meets Miss Havisham in the eerie house where the clocks were stopped at the exact minute that Miss Havisham was jilted many years before.

From the book:

“Look at me,” said Miss Havisham. “You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were born?”

(Pip tells the reader:) I regret to state that I was not afraid of telling the enormous lie comprehended in the answer, “No.”

“Do you know what I touch here?” she said, laying her hands one upon the other, on her left side.

“Yes, mam.”

“What do I touch?”

“Your heart.”

“Broken!” (shrieks Miss Havisham).

Jarvis will put an arrow through your own heart as he emits that shriek in the voice he has adopted for Miss Havisham.

His voices for the other characters, from the convict Magwitch to gentle Joe the blacksmith, are also magnificent.

In fact, his “Great Expectations” is the most brilliant reading of an English classic that I ever hope to hear.

You can purchase this unabridged reading (no rentals) from Cover to Cover for 37.5 pounds sterling, or about $61 U.S. at current exchange rates. The company accepts Visa and Mastercard and will write in the latest exchange rate.

If you want to rent, there are good readings from Books on Tape (800-626-3333) and Recorded Books (800-638-1304), but the version I most strongly recommend is that done by Gene Engene for Books in Motion of Spokane, Wash.

If you don’t believe an American can read a British classic to your satisfaction, Engene will convince you otherwise. Also, if you prefer a little slower reading, his is the one. It rents for $15 a month; you can buy it for $48.95.

Dickens loved reading his own work to audiences, according to Norman and Jean MacKenzie’s “Dickens: A Life” (Oxford University Press, 1979). They write that the author’s lecture tour in America over the winter of 1867-68 earned him more than $200,000, an enormous sum for the day.

It also taxed his health. E. M. Forster said he noticed a loss of Dickens’ “natural force” when the author returned to England. His health steadily declined, and he died in 1870 at age 58.

WHERE TO ORDER TAPES:

Cover to Cover Cassettes Inc.; International call: 0264 89 227; P.O. Box 112; Marlborough, Wiltshire SN8 3UG, England

Books in Motion; 800-752-3199; East 9212 Montgomery, Suite 501, Spokane 99206