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limeytram 's review for:
Middlemarch
by George Eliot
Deserves a slightly longer review given how goddam long it is:
Unlike anything I’ve ever read really! By choosing to read this you commit to sitting quite peacefully in the world it creates. You’re never much rushed by anything going on (kind of like the characters themselves), which feels difficult at first but quickly becomes this really amazing reading experience. Eventually you’re just completely in love with the place and its characters. The love interests are all quite unlovely, but not in any grotesque or caricatured way. Really, everybody is a normal, complex, imperfect human. Your choice to love or hate characters seems entirely personal to you (my favs were Celia, all the Garths, Raffles and the donnish Fred) and again that’s quite a unique reading experience, to not be told always what to believe or who to root for / despise. That’s not to say it’s apolitical either. Eliot threads the history of early 19C reform throughout the story, but subtly, so as to allow you that room to analyse its political undertones without forcing it in any heavily didactic way. You kind of just tune into this society every time you pick up the book, and are free to look deeper into any aspect as you wish. Highly recommend to anyone with a planned long summer read.
Unlike anything I’ve ever read really! By choosing to read this you commit to sitting quite peacefully in the world it creates. You’re never much rushed by anything going on (kind of like the characters themselves), which feels difficult at first but quickly becomes this really amazing reading experience. Eventually you’re just completely in love with the place and its characters. The love interests are all quite unlovely, but not in any grotesque or caricatured way. Really, everybody is a normal, complex, imperfect human. Your choice to love or hate characters seems entirely personal to you (my favs were Celia, all the Garths, Raffles and the donnish Fred) and again that’s quite a unique reading experience, to not be told always what to believe or who to root for / despise. That’s not to say it’s apolitical either. Eliot threads the history of early 19C reform throughout the story, but subtly, so as to allow you that room to analyse its political undertones without forcing it in any heavily didactic way. You kind of just tune into this society every time you pick up the book, and are free to look deeper into any aspect as you wish. Highly recommend to anyone with a planned long summer read.