‘Great Expectations’

When I first started this column, I touched on the idea that sometimes the works of art we love change with time. Rather, it isn’t the work, but how we receive it having lived more life. I think this is one of the things I’ve always liked best about books — because we bring our own minds and experiences with us when we read, we never read a book the same way the person beside us does and, because of time, we never read the same book twice.
I read “Great Expectations” when I was 13 years old and loved it. I’m not sure Charles Dickens is what most teenage girls go for, but I did: I loved his characters and the moral lessons at the heart of his stories, and “Great Expectations” was my book. When I left home at 18, my copy went into a box, I went about living, and time did what it does.