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cleverbaggins 's review for:
Silas Marner
by George Eliot
Stuck between books the other day I had a sudden desire to read anything but science fiction or fantasy which, of course, is 90% of what I own. I wanted nonfiction or some classics I've never tried. I ran to the library after work but only had 20 minutes to grab whatever I could find before they closed. (It was a nightmare.)
Now I've been wanting to read Middlemarch by George Eliot for a while. It's come up referenced a couple of times in things and sounded interesting but of course the library didn't have it. They did have Silas Marner and it's a cute little red cloth Everyman's Library edition that feels nice in the hand (Sometime books just feel amazing to hold, don't they?) and had a little ribbon marker. My father always said he liked it when he read it years ago and it's only a little over 200 pages so I thought I'd give it a go.
It was horrible.
In case you've never heard of it, t's about a weaver called Silas Marner who, after some horrible things in his life, just works and collects gold. There's nothing else in his life. He's not mean or vengeful or cruel just alone and miserly until one day all his gold is stolen and he has nothing at all until a little child literally walks into his life when her mother dies on the road and he takes her in and raises her. There's more plot of course, who took the gold and why, where the mother came from, ect. The problem is that the story never gets going.
The writing isn't clever like Austen or witty like Twain. It's not pretty or vivid or even exciting and worse, for the longest time nothing happens. Even in the middle of the theft and discovery of the gold being missing the text goes to the local pub and sits there listening to the men inside argue about nothing at all for at least a chapter before Silas appears to startle them. The child doesn't even show up until something like page 150 in the book! After that it was a little more interesting and I could enjoy the writing I think if anything happened because you'd get these little bursts of a paragraph or two where you go- "Okay, finally. Here we go. It's getting good." Then, nope, dead again.
It was so disappointing and put me off the idea of trying Middlemarch for a while because I'm just not excited about it anymore.
Now I've been wanting to read Middlemarch by George Eliot for a while. It's come up referenced a couple of times in things and sounded interesting but of course the library didn't have it. They did have Silas Marner and it's a cute little red cloth Everyman's Library edition that feels nice in the hand (Sometime books just feel amazing to hold, don't they?) and had a little ribbon marker. My father always said he liked it when he read it years ago and it's only a little over 200 pages so I thought I'd give it a go.
It was horrible.
In case you've never heard of it, t's about a weaver called Silas Marner who, after some horrible things in his life, just works and collects gold. There's nothing else in his life. He's not mean or vengeful or cruel just alone and miserly until one day all his gold is stolen and he has nothing at all until a little child literally walks into his life when her mother dies on the road and he takes her in and raises her. There's more plot of course, who took the gold and why, where the mother came from, ect. The problem is that the story never gets going.
The writing isn't clever like Austen or witty like Twain. It's not pretty or vivid or even exciting and worse, for the longest time nothing happens. Even in the middle of the theft and discovery of the gold being missing the text goes to the local pub and sits there listening to the men inside argue about nothing at all for at least a chapter before Silas appears to startle them. The child doesn't even show up until something like page 150 in the book! After that it was a little more interesting and I could enjoy the writing I think if anything happened because you'd get these little bursts of a paragraph or two where you go- "Okay, finally. Here we go. It's getting good." Then, nope, dead again.
It was so disappointing and put me off the idea of trying Middlemarch for a while because I'm just not excited about it anymore.