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dennisfischman 's review for:
Effi Briest
by Theodor Fontane
I can understand why some people compare this book to Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, but it is at once a slighter novel and a subtler, more realistic portrayal. I think the closer comparison is with Daniel Deronda. In each, a girl gets married too young to an older man who wants her for the wrong reasons, lives to regret it, and seeks a way out that finally is not a way out at all.
The George Eliot novel is much more of a melodrama, however (not saying that as a derogatory term, just a genre). This is a commentary about being trapped by gender roles and social convention--a book about people making mistakes and learning to live with the consequences--and most of all, an example of storytelling. You could summarize this book in two sentences (as another reviewer on Goodreads remarks), but it's the author's art that makes it worth reading.
I hope by the time I die, young women will not know what this book was all about without someone explaining it to them. Codes of honor...feh!
The George Eliot novel is much more of a melodrama, however (not saying that as a derogatory term, just a genre). This is a commentary about being trapped by gender roles and social convention--a book about people making mistakes and learning to live with the consequences--and most of all, an example of storytelling. You could summarize this book in two sentences (as another reviewer on Goodreads remarks), but it's the author's art that makes it worth reading.
I hope by the time I die, young women will not know what this book was all about without someone explaining it to them. Codes of honor...feh!