Reviews

Middlemarch can sincerely be described as the Victorian English equivalent of a slice-of-life manga. It is split into 8 books of roughly 10 chapters each, and spans the variously intersecting lives of a few handfuls of people over just a few years -- and is very long.

Eliot's greatest quality is her sympathy. She devotes painstaking time to understanding the desires and struggles in nearly every character, so that we sympathize for instance, both with Dorothea Brooke as she begins to realize her new husband is a passionless man and a mediocre scholar, and also with Edward Casaubon as he is tormented by his own inability to live up to the genius that his young wife thought he was. Eliot is at her best in long, drawn-out passages that wander inside the various thoughts, hopes, dreams, insecurities, worries, and everything else of her beloved characters, staging the little dramas that play out in the various mundane moments we have with ourselves and with others.

I just have two qualms with Middlemarch that I care to share:

1) It is a little too epigrammatic or pithy. At least at the time of reading, I wasn't very disposed towards a writing style that tends to culminate in very direct and quotable lines. Eliot frequently tends toward such a style, whose lack of subtlety undermines the more impressive, less direct little observations and musings that I really appreciated Middlemarch for.

2) The ending is a little too happy, and in my opinion, just a little bit too unrealistic with regard to the attitudes of some of the characters, such as

Spoiler

Caleb's pure simplicity and honesty, Fred's ability to give up his temptations and become an honest man, Farebrother's self-erasure of his love for Mary for Fred's sake...

. But I shouldn't complain too much - throughout this massive tome of a novel, there is plenty suffering and plenty discontent, and perhaps after reading some eight- or nine hundred pages, we should be thanking Eliot for letting us not return to the living world feeling totally miserable the way literature sometimes can.

Overall Middlemarch is a pleasant read by an adept storyteller, and provides a gentle escape into the little dramas of a little English town, crafted together lovingly so that perhaps there will always be a little spot in our hearts reserved for the little lives that Eliot so carefully windowed so long ago.

gmrobidas's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective relaxing slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

3camels's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.0

snakat1974's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective

5.0

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