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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
i feel like these people are My neighbors and i’ve just put them aside for a bit and if i pick it back up i’ll fall back into the world like alice in wonderland. except if wonderland was much more soberly colored and full of dashing misled young men and ladies with firm principles and lots of tears in their eyes!
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
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:
Yes
I wish it were possible to give 6 or 7 stars, just to show how far off the charts this book goes. In 1997, Middlemarch was my favorite book. By 2000, I'd started to worry that maybe I'd loved it so much because my critical apparatus wasn't yet fully formed; I had a couple disappointing experiences rereading old favorites. Then I read Silas Marner and Daniel Deronda and was so dreadfully chagrined! Such sentimentality and bad prose and blehhhhhhhhh! I lost all faith in George Eliot. But three days ago I started rereading this one, which now ranks as #3 in my all-time favorites list (after To the Lighthouse and Lolita. And maybe I love it even more now, in my thirties, now that I, like ***SPOILER*** Lydgate, Dorothea, Casaubon, Rosamond, Fred, Bulstrode, Ladislaw, Brooks, Farebrother, and Caleb Garth, have had a taste or two of failed ambition. The novel is a love song to really good people who don't know how to run their own lives, really good faith in other people that gets betrayed, and really, really good ideas that go really, really wrong--with perfect characterization, plotting, prose, self-deprecating humor, and even a good dog joke.
A lengthy tome, I started it appropriately, in middle March and finished it in middle April. This book ranks at number 27 in the BBC Big Read table, a table compiled in 2003 based on the British nation’s favourite reads. Seems a bit unnecessary to review it when it has already been reviewed thousands of times by others more literate than myself.
682 pages followed by 26 pages of footnotes. A complex plot with many threads interwoven. A book about the conservatism of a fictitious midlands town in the 1830s, a time of great changes. A doctor, by the name of Lydgate comes to the town with great ambitions for making scientific discoveries. But finds his plans are resisted by the locals not ready for change. The doctor’s plans are also compromised by an unwise marriage he makes to the pretty daughter of the mayor, who is a spendthrift and ill at ease with her husband’s profession.
The Doctor Lydgate, and Miss Brooke or Dorothea are probably the closest to heroes and heroines in the book. They are both clever in some ways but naive in others and make mistakes when choosing whom to marry. In many Victorian novels these two would end up together after numerous frustrations but this is a far more complex and realistic novel.
There are many characters in the book, it is difficult to remember who they all are. I had previously read “Silas Marner” and “The Mill on the Floss” by George Eliot, these books were far simpler than “Middlemarch“. The novel takes a while to get going but there are many threads intricately woven together, and the interplay of the characters is realistic, not relying so much on unlikely coincidences as a Dickens’ novel might.
This is a big novel which attempts to address many issues and largely succeeds. The characters are realistic not caricatures, the bad characters have some sympathetic aspects and the good characters have their flaws.
682 pages followed by 26 pages of footnotes. A complex plot with many threads interwoven. A book about the conservatism of a fictitious midlands town in the 1830s, a time of great changes. A doctor, by the name of Lydgate comes to the town with great ambitions for making scientific discoveries. But finds his plans are resisted by the locals not ready for change. The doctor’s plans are also compromised by an unwise marriage he makes to the pretty daughter of the mayor, who is a spendthrift and ill at ease with her husband’s profession.
The Doctor Lydgate, and Miss Brooke or Dorothea are probably the closest to heroes and heroines in the book. They are both clever in some ways but naive in others and make mistakes when choosing whom to marry. In many Victorian novels these two would end up together after numerous frustrations but this is a far more complex and realistic novel.
There are many characters in the book, it is difficult to remember who they all are. I had previously read “Silas Marner” and “The Mill on the Floss” by George Eliot, these books were far simpler than “Middlemarch“. The novel takes a while to get going but there are many threads intricately woven together, and the interplay of the characters is realistic, not relying so much on unlikely coincidences as a Dickens’ novel might.
This is a big novel which attempts to address many issues and largely succeeds. The characters are realistic not caricatures, the bad characters have some sympathetic aspects and the good characters have their flaws.
Sometimes, as I give yet another novel a rather harsh 2.25 star review, I think to myself, "What if the problem isn't the book, Brookeshelf? What if the problem is you? Maybe this is a perfectly good novel -- 4 stars, 4.5 maybe -- but you, looking at the world through eyes stained with your own bitterness, simply can't see it? Perhaps the bile on your palate turns the sweet fruits of literary delight into repulsive dreck? Perhaps the fault is not in the novels, but in yourself?"
But then I read something like Middlemarch, and the word rights itself; I think, no, the problem isn't me, my perspective remains accurate because I can still recognize greatness when I see it. We won't argue about whether this is the best novel in English, we will simply agree that it's certainly one of the top 5. If you haven't read it -- what are you doing with your life? Stop reading this review NOW and go start reading Middlemarch! If you have read it, might I suggest a re-read? Like all great art, it is "news that stays news."
Is it possible for a woman (or anyone, Dr Lydgate?) to live an epic life anymore? Or is world-changing greatness always a thing of the past? This is the question that sets all the complex interactions of this novel in motion and animates the whole. I must admit that as I was reading the final section I felt a certain uneasiness about where things were heading, but when I got to the end I found it was the perfect conclusion for this perfect book. Does this website give more than 5 stars?
[END OF REVIEW; BEGINNING OF THEORETICAL DIVAGATION]
A notion: Middlemarch is better than any contemporary novel because it was written by a writer who believed, living in a society that also believed, that the novel was an art form capable of genuinely capturing the whole of the life and society of its time, and portraying the full thoughts, feelings and motivations of its characters. To put it another way, Eliot could write a novel while trusting completely in the potential of the form; she wasn't seeing herself writing a novel at one remove. That wholeness is gone for us now. After the 20th-century experiments of stream of consciousness, metafiction and so on -- all attempts to jolt the corpse of the 19th-century novel back to life -- writers can't write a novel without thinking about the fact that they're writing a novel, and wondering what the form means, and whether it is still relevant. Perhaps we have to accept that the novel is a zombie art form, still lurching through our culture because people engage in it out of habit, but it has become the object of worship for a small cult of devotees, not a form that expresses its entire society?
But then I read something like Middlemarch, and the word rights itself; I think, no, the problem isn't me, my perspective remains accurate because I can still recognize greatness when I see it. We won't argue about whether this is the best novel in English, we will simply agree that it's certainly one of the top 5. If you haven't read it -- what are you doing with your life? Stop reading this review NOW and go start reading Middlemarch! If you have read it, might I suggest a re-read? Like all great art, it is "news that stays news."
Is it possible for a woman (or anyone, Dr Lydgate?) to live an epic life anymore? Or is world-changing greatness always a thing of the past? This is the question that sets all the complex interactions of this novel in motion and animates the whole. I must admit that as I was reading the final section I felt a certain uneasiness about where things were heading, but when I got to the end I found it was the perfect conclusion for this perfect book. Does this website give more than 5 stars?
[END OF REVIEW; BEGINNING OF THEORETICAL DIVAGATION]
A notion: Middlemarch is better than any contemporary novel because it was written by a writer who believed, living in a society that also believed, that the novel was an art form capable of genuinely capturing the whole of the life and society of its time, and portraying the full thoughts, feelings and motivations of its characters. To put it another way, Eliot could write a novel while trusting completely in the potential of the form; she wasn't seeing herself writing a novel at one remove. That wholeness is gone for us now. After the 20th-century experiments of stream of consciousness, metafiction and so on -- all attempts to jolt the corpse of the 19th-century novel back to life -- writers can't write a novel without thinking about the fact that they're writing a novel, and wondering what the form means, and whether it is still relevant. Perhaps we have to accept that the novel is a zombie art form, still lurching through our culture because people engage in it out of habit, but it has become the object of worship for a small cult of devotees, not a form that expresses its entire society?
It was a pleasure keeping up with the Middlemarchers. George Eliot's understanding of human nature and its many beautiful complexities makes this an essential read, especially if you love 19th-century Brit lit. Have patience as there are several scenes of men discussing politics in detail that may be realistic for the time, but will be virtually meaningless unless you are a professor of Victorian governance. What is far more meaningful is Eliot's study of marriage--its strengths and limitations in an era when courting was short and divorce was nearly impossible.
challenging
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
informative
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Probably the greatest English novel of all time but don't worry it's .4 points lower than "The Great Alone" so.