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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
informative
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
I wasn't a great fan of this one. There's so much going on that it's hard to latch on to any of the plots or characters--unlike in Eliot's Middlemarch, which I love, what initially seems disparate doesn't really come together in a satisfying way. I really liked the intriguing, bitter Mrs. Transome, but the other characters didn't feel very real or very appealing; Felix himself, our ostensible hero, is especially obnoxious.
Look at this baller simile: "Esther always avoided asking questions of Lyddy, who found an answer as she found a key, by pouring out a pocketful of miscellanies."
adventurous
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
OK, so this is my first ever Eliot so bare with me. It's New Year's Day and I find myself in an Air BnB (Of course I'm ashamed of myself, but willing to admit my faults--or the faults of poverty) in Budapest and my wife wants to go to lunch so I'll quickly sketch out a few thoughts. I went back 'n' forth a bit pleasure-wise with this novel. I love Victorian novels, intricate plotting, and the dialogic clashing of characters, so those aspects pleased me very much. Eliot is obviously a star in the form and all of these aspects are classic features of novels of the period and are handled exquisitely. I'm also an author completely opposed to the modern pressures of bourgeois writing so I loved the fact that there were no likable characters at all in this novel. This is as it should be. Did I feel for and suffer with the characters by the end--of course! This is how empathy is constructed and maintained in a world of self-interested, frightened, and desperate human beings all very wary of one another. The love story palled, however, on this older and perhaps too jaded twice-divorced romantic failure. (My third wife is standing by the door tapping her foot so, you see, failure.) On the bright side, I loved the politics and the close description of the machinations that went into a British election of the period. Very engrossing! The big revelation toward the end was pretty evident from the earliest scenes dealing with those characters so that's either good or bad, I suppose, depending upon the author's intention (something we will never know!) and/or a reader's annoyance/delight in having things hidden and revealed dramatically in a narrative's denouement. Speaking for myself, I'm usually a very naive reader hoodwinked normally by such devices--although they neither please nor annoy me--so the fact that I figured this one out almost from the get-go probably means it was over-telegraphed, again depending upon some subjective measure of such things. Anyway, I will leave off comparing the novel's politics to today's swamp rats and all of their anti-rhetorical rhetoric, but you will certainly find something upon which to meditate here in whatever political situation you find yourself, for the business of and the reasons for obtaining political office in the Western democracies remain pretty much unchanged these last two hundred plus years. Also I will say that I liked Felix Holt, The Radical well enough to continue on reading Eliot. Perhaps Romola next? I do live in Florence and I have a lovely old hardback edition with photos of my adopted city from the last century. Cheers, and Happy New Year everybody!