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A review by outcolder
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
3.0
Infuriating. Spent the last hundred pages or so talking out loud to the book, like, "Forget that guy!" and "Don't do it!" and "Eff off!" then the end... groan. I didn't read the edition pictured, which is too bad, because the one I had had no notes or introductory essay or anything. There were some laugh out loud funny bits, especially with the breakout character of the 'packman' Bob Jakin but also the trio of unbearable aunts... Mrs. Glegg chief among them... although the harder it gets for Maggie the less funny the aunts are.
I think this novel would have been greatly improved if Maggie's fetisch had made a reappearance later in the book, like maybe at the very end, floating down the river... but then when I go corny, I go the whole hog. Let's get that hunchback healed... Or maybe Stephen Guest produces the fetisch and says in George Eliot's florid prose that he found it somehwere as a kid and that it talks to him and that everything he did was stuff the fetisch said to do... I loved that fetisch. Back then, you could write stuff like that into a novel and then just never mention it again. Nowadays, there's all these rules. Nowadays, the publisher would have made Eliot cut like 200 pages and heal the hunchback. But nowadays, Maggie could do everything she does in this book and face absolutely zero moral oprobium for it so ...
I think this novel would have been greatly improved if Maggie's fetisch had made a reappearance later in the book, like maybe at the very end, floating down the river... but then when I go corny, I go the whole hog. Let's get that hunchback healed... Or maybe Stephen Guest produces the fetisch and says in George Eliot's florid prose that he found it somehwere as a kid and that it talks to him and that everything he did was stuff the fetisch said to do... I loved that fetisch. Back then, you could write stuff like that into a novel and then just never mention it again. Nowadays, there's all these rules. Nowadays, the publisher would have made Eliot cut like 200 pages and heal the hunchback. But nowadays, Maggie could do everything she does in this book and face absolutely zero moral oprobium for it so ...