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paul314 's review for:
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
I first read this book, I think, thirty or so years ago, and at the time I loved it. And like many books I have loved, I never wanted to read it again, thinking that when I finally did I would be disappointed.
However! I finally decided to pick it up again, and I have to say that it was even better than I remembered. The thing is, George Eliot is funny, and she is incredibly observant about people, their behaviors, and their motivations. All the characters she describes in the early 1800s could just as easily be around today, and would still be vulnerable to the way she sneaks up and hits them with their own foibles.
That’s even more accentuated by the beauty of the prose. You find yourself in the middle of a sentence, delightfully following her langorous, piercing parsing of someone’s actions, and then realize, like a German verb looming at the end of a sentence, that she’s winding up to smack someone good.
Finally, all the characters and the setting are extremely well-rounded. Yes, it’s a long book, but it pays off because she's building something... she’s building individual people with individual expectations, and a town full of definition of idiosyncrasy. What a great book.
Five stars.
However! I finally decided to pick it up again, and I have to say that it was even better than I remembered. The thing is, George Eliot is funny, and she is incredibly observant about people, their behaviors, and their motivations. All the characters she describes in the early 1800s could just as easily be around today, and would still be vulnerable to the way she sneaks up and hits them with their own foibles.
That’s even more accentuated by the beauty of the prose. You find yourself in the middle of a sentence, delightfully following her langorous, piercing parsing of someone’s actions, and then realize, like a German verb looming at the end of a sentence, that she’s winding up to smack someone good.
Finally, all the characters and the setting are extremely well-rounded. Yes, it’s a long book, but it pays off because she's building something... she’s building individual people with individual expectations, and a town full of definition of idiosyncrasy. What a great book.
Five stars.