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A review by matthewcpeck
Middlemarch by George Eliot
4.0
George Eliot's lauded mosaic of provincial life celebrates its 150th birthday this year, so I assume I'm not the only one who was tempted to give it a go for the first time. What's striking about "Middlemarch", apart from the length, is the psychology. Eliot's ability to get inside her characters' heads, and chart out their motivating anxieties and fears and prejudice, helps "Middlemarch" feel remarkably fresh despite the distance of time and place. These fictional people in 1830s midlands Britain deal with the same stress as I deal with now, and generations to come. The way Eliot describes overthinking, in particular, is a bridge to modern literary fiction. The dialogue is terrific, too, and very often funny. I appreciate authors that make an effort of actually having different people speak in different ways, with their own quirks of speech and favorite phrases. My favorite is scatterbrained Mr. Brooke, with his "you know..." in every other sentence.
The plot tightens a bit in the scandals of the final section, but not a lot happens over the course of "Middlemarch", at least by usual dramatic standards. Sometimes the book feels genuinely never-ending, as simple miscommunications are drawn out over chapters in seeming real time. But the changes in the characters feel organic, where they might have seemed forced in a shorter work. "Middlemarch" had to be long.
The plot tightens a bit in the scandals of the final section, but not a lot happens over the course of "Middlemarch", at least by usual dramatic standards. Sometimes the book feels genuinely never-ending, as simple miscommunications are drawn out over chapters in seeming real time. But the changes in the characters feel organic, where they might have seemed forced in a shorter work. "Middlemarch" had to be long.