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A review by 21stcenturyfox
Middlemarch by George Eliot
4.0
I adore George Eliot's grip of words and her digestibly thorough prose and enjoyable flow of writing. Well-written complex characters who you can both despise and sympathise with, you'd feel like you could know someone like some of them in real life. The ending, I feel, fits for the book and I'm not mad about it.
The book is a bit of slow burn but worth it, despite its ups and downs, especially because there are heaps of stories and rel tionships of different characters in it. Sometimes it's hollow and I couldn't careless, but sometimes I feel a fervent passion for the book. Contrast to the fanciful romance of marriage themed fiction in her time, here Eliot laid bare the reality of an inharmonious marriage life -- and inverting the conventional trope in the story of Lydgate and Rosamond -- along with other topics such as religion and hypocrisy. The book also serves as a psychological insights of the mechanism of mundane provincial life. I'd say it's fairly realistic from my personal experience, sometimes the book took me back to childhood despite predating it by centuries. I find a subtle exclusive relatability in this book as a lady, perhaps Dorothea's character greatly impacted it.
I liked Dorothea's growth from the smart but naïve girl to a woman. Although her ending didn't really satisfy me, I was hoping she'd be out for bigger things, but by the nature of the book, it didn't really bother me and I liked Will enough. Lydgate might've been my favourite character despite his flaws and I also liked Fred and Mary's story.
I'm not married, don't think even legally allowed to LOL, but this book was a great insights on the ill-advised side of marriage life.
I had taken a pause from it, but finally finished it in the midst of a hectic life, sometimes you need to take a vacation and I had Middlemarch as my destination. I couldn't write much about this book, but believe me, I have a lot of thoughts clogging up my noggin. It is indeed an amazing piece of literature.
The book is a bit of slow burn but worth it, despite its ups and downs, especially because there are heaps of stories and rel tionships of different characters in it. Sometimes it's hollow and I couldn't careless, but sometimes I feel a fervent passion for the book. Contrast to the fanciful romance of marriage themed fiction in her time, here Eliot laid bare the reality of an inharmonious marriage life -- and inverting the conventional trope in the story of Lydgate and Rosamond -- along with other topics such as religion and hypocrisy. The book also serves as a psychological insights of the mechanism of mundane provincial life. I'd say it's fairly realistic from my personal experience, sometimes the book took me back to childhood despite predating it by centuries. I find a subtle exclusive relatability in this book as a lady, perhaps Dorothea's character greatly impacted it.
I liked Dorothea's growth from the smart but naïve girl to a woman. Although her ending didn't really satisfy me, I was hoping she'd be out for bigger things, but by the nature of the book, it didn't really bother me and I liked Will enough. Lydgate might've been my favourite character despite his flaws and I also liked Fred and Mary's story.
I'm not married, don't think even legally allowed to LOL, but this book was a great insights on the ill-advised side of marriage life.
I had taken a pause from it, but finally finished it in the midst of a hectic life, sometimes you need to take a vacation and I had Middlemarch as my destination. I couldn't write much about this book, but believe me, I have a lot of thoughts clogging up my noggin. It is indeed an amazing piece of literature.