Estella'A haunting and darkly beautiful retelling of Dickens's Great Expectations.' Karen Brooks, author. The icily enigmatic anti hero of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations tells her own story and changes the ending in this beguiling feminist take on a classic for readers of Pip Williams and Karen Brooks. At just three years of age, Estella is taken from her mother, adopted by the wealthy but eccentric Miss Havisham and taught how to break men's hearts.