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thelizabeth's reviews
591 reviews
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Taking another nerdy pass through the somewhat silly 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list this week. Now with Goodreads-friendly spreadsheet.
I have a hard time rating books I read long ago, so I really haven't added many. That's mainly why I love saving comments on what I read now, so I can remember years later.
Kind of insane I haven't reread in full in so long, since I loved it so much. I owe it one.
(For reference: John Green's videos about Catcher in the Rye. Intro, first half, and second half.
I have a hard time rating books I read long ago, so I really haven't added many. That's mainly why I love saving comments on what I read now, so I can remember years later.
Kind of insane I haven't reread in full in so long, since I loved it so much. I owe it one.
(For reference: John Green's videos about Catcher in the Rye. Intro, first half, and second half.
Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
Taking another nerdy pass through the somewhat silly 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list this week. Now with Goodreads-friendly spreadsheet.
I have a hard time rating books I read long ago, so I really haven't added many. That's mainly why I love saving comments on what I read now, so I can remember years later.
This is one that I loved so much as a teenager that I'm a little worried to reread it as an adult and potentially ruin it.
I have a hard time rating books I read long ago, so I really haven't added many. That's mainly why I love saving comments on what I read now, so I can remember years later.
This is one that I loved so much as a teenager that I'm a little worried to reread it as an adult and potentially ruin it.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Taking another nerdy pass through the somewhat silly 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list this week. Now with Goodreads-friendly spreadsheet.
I have a hard time rating books I read long ago, so I really haven't added many. That's mainly why I love saving comments on what I read now, so I can remember years later.
Pretty sure I borrowed this off of one of my high school teachers, who definitely had a moment of pause due to there totally being at least one sex scene, but lent it anyway, which was really great. I don't remember a whole lot of what it's about, but it came to mind recently when I read Cutting For Stone. It seems like kind of a RIYL, though I doubt I'd love it as much.
I have a hard time rating books I read long ago, so I really haven't added many. That's mainly why I love saving comments on what I read now, so I can remember years later.
Pretty sure I borrowed this off of one of my high school teachers, who definitely had a moment of pause due to there totally being at least one sex scene, but lent it anyway, which was really great. I don't remember a whole lot of what it's about, but it came to mind recently when I read Cutting For Stone. It seems like kind of a RIYL, though I doubt I'd love it as much.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
Taking another nerdy pass through the somewhat silly 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list this week. Now with Goodreads-friendly spreadsheet.
I have a hard time rating books I read long ago, so I really haven't added many. That's mainly why I love saving comments on what I read now, so I can remember years later.
Quite near the top of my need-to-reread list. I bought this the week it came out, when I was in high school. I don't think I've read it in full since then.
I have a hard time rating books I read long ago, so I really haven't added many. That's mainly why I love saving comments on what I read now, so I can remember years later.
Quite near the top of my need-to-reread list. I bought this the week it came out, when I was in high school. I don't think I've read it in full since then.
The Wee Free Men: The Beginning: The Wee Free Men and a Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett
5.0
This was a fantastic surprise. I totally underestimated this one. I've never read Pratchett before, and I had some doubt that I would like it, pre-judging the genre Discworld sits in. I knew to expect a style most British, most silly, wit and wordplay and traditional magic, and a dash of zany action. It's a little like I've never outright read Douglas Adams -- he's very very funny (and I like his work a lot when there's people making it as funny as it is) -- but would I want to rest a whole reading experience on this style? I'm not really sure.
Anyway, what do I know, because I was all, all wrong.
Truthfully, indeed, the elements here are not immensely far out of the box. So it's hard to know in advance. It's entirely the work of what Pratchett's thought and style brings to the ingredients that sets them to life, and it's wonderful.
Tiffany is fantastic, of course, an awesome little girl to hang a story upon. I really like that she is more smart than sass -- she outthinks most of those around her, and has to subvert authority plenty, but also she's often rather silly, as she is 9. (And later, 11. Which as she points out, is completely different.) Her feelings are thoughtful and complexly drawn. Her world on her farm, her shepherding culture, comes greatly to life instead of being a pat setting. I enjoyed being there so much, right away. Her love and memories of her tough grandmother, taking strength in retrospect from the things she learned from her. How she keeps remembering the day she gave Granny the china shepherdess, with such regret.
And I just gotta say somewhere, Granny's dogs named Thunder and Lightning, are you kidding me, they're so cool.
I loved Tiffany's journey through dreamland to rescue the baby brother she otherwise can't stand for another second. (He's been taken, and that's wrong -- when she uses him for monster bait, that's different! He's her brother!) Everyone I talked to about the books told me they liked this book less than the second book, but I actually disagreed. I was impressed that something as frankly unoriginal as "this is a land where dreams are real" came alive so well. Because of what happens in the second book, in a way it's Tiffany that goes missing, and I like her so much more in action as herself.
Also. This one is important. I loved the Feegles. The little magic people who help Tiffany, essentially leprechauns, who speak in a ridiculous brogue and are mostly men and are mostly there for madcap antics and, man. I CAN'T BELIEVE I LOVED THOSE GUYS. Because if I were explaining them to myself two months ago, I would say to myself, "I am going to hate those guys." Wrong, Liz! Own the facts! As much as they love kebabs, I loved the Feegles. I cracked up aloud on the subway every day at something they said. They are so funny, it's incredible. (Also particularly liked when Tiffany had to pause and take the toad out of her pocket to check if whatever they'd just said was an insult or not.)
(And once, they claim to be "bigger on the inside.")
The narration is just a total pleasure to read. It's funny, but sharp. He's not just constructing jokes, he's setting up a way to say the most excellent things. Such as an incredibly brilliant funny paragraph that culminates, "With balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string."
And more personally, Tiffany's lessons in both these books are beautiful. She learns so much from the witches she meets, about being smart and doing hard things. Probably the best thing about the entire book is the fact that being a witch has almost nothing to do with doing magic, and entirely everything to do with just being incredibly smart. Seeing the truth, keeping your head, knowing how to think, being patient with the innumerable mistakes of others, taking responsibility when it isn't anyone's. And how that sometimes prevents you from belonging, too. "She wasn't being brave or noble or kind. She was doing this because it had to be done, because there was no way that she could not do it." It's perfect.
Plus there's opportunities for really small beautiful moments that are mostly magic but not entirely, like Tiffany starting the dance with the swarm of bees. And I like when she gets to save everyone both times with some Bad Wolfin', as I like to call it. A girl taking in surprising new power and using it for good, in a great surge. That often makes a good story I like. Tiffany is learning that this power exists when it has to.
I can't wait to read more about it.
.
I am trying to make zen with the fact that Goodreads will show this as reading one book instead of two. Sigh. I can do it. I'll be ok.
ETA: NEVER MIND, I DID IT! I AM THE GOODREADS MASTER, EVERYTHING IS COOL HERE.
Anyway, what do I know, because I was all, all wrong.
Truthfully, indeed, the elements here are not immensely far out of the box. So it's hard to know in advance. It's entirely the work of what Pratchett's thought and style brings to the ingredients that sets them to life, and it's wonderful.
Tiffany is fantastic, of course, an awesome little girl to hang a story upon. I really like that she is more smart than sass -- she outthinks most of those around her, and has to subvert authority plenty, but also she's often rather silly, as she is 9. (And later, 11. Which as she points out, is completely different.) Her feelings are thoughtful and complexly drawn. Her world on her farm, her shepherding culture, comes greatly to life instead of being a pat setting. I enjoyed being there so much, right away. Her love and memories of her tough grandmother, taking strength in retrospect from the things she learned from her. How she keeps remembering the day she gave Granny the china shepherdess, with such regret.
And I just gotta say somewhere, Granny's dogs named Thunder and Lightning, are you kidding me, they're so cool.
I loved Tiffany's journey through dreamland to rescue the baby brother she otherwise can't stand for another second. (He's been taken, and that's wrong -- when she uses him for monster bait, that's different! He's her brother!) Everyone I talked to about the books told me they liked this book less than the second book, but I actually disagreed. I was impressed that something as frankly unoriginal as "this is a land where dreams are real" came alive so well. Because of what happens in the second book, in a way it's Tiffany that goes missing, and I like her so much more in action as herself.
Also. This one is important. I loved the Feegles. The little magic people who help Tiffany, essentially leprechauns, who speak in a ridiculous brogue and are mostly men and are mostly there for madcap antics and, man. I CAN'T BELIEVE I LOVED THOSE GUYS. Because if I were explaining them to myself two months ago, I would say to myself, "I am going to hate those guys." Wrong, Liz! Own the facts! As much as they love kebabs, I loved the Feegles. I cracked up aloud on the subway every day at something they said. They are so funny, it's incredible. (Also particularly liked when Tiffany had to pause and take the toad out of her pocket to check if whatever they'd just said was an insult or not.)
(And once, they claim to be "bigger on the inside.")
The narration is just a total pleasure to read. It's funny, but sharp. He's not just constructing jokes, he's setting up a way to say the most excellent things. Such as an incredibly brilliant funny paragraph that culminates, "With balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string."
And more personally, Tiffany's lessons in both these books are beautiful. She learns so much from the witches she meets, about being smart and doing hard things. Probably the best thing about the entire book is the fact that being a witch has almost nothing to do with doing magic, and entirely everything to do with just being incredibly smart. Seeing the truth, keeping your head, knowing how to think, being patient with the innumerable mistakes of others, taking responsibility when it isn't anyone's. And how that sometimes prevents you from belonging, too. "She wasn't being brave or noble or kind. She was doing this because it had to be done, because there was no way that she could not do it." It's perfect.
Plus there's opportunities for really small beautiful moments that are mostly magic but not entirely, like Tiffany starting the dance with the swarm of bees. And I like when she gets to save everyone both times with some Bad Wolfin', as I like to call it. A girl taking in surprising new power and using it for good, in a great surge. That often makes a good story I like. Tiffany is learning that this power exists when it has to.
I can't wait to read more about it.
.
I am trying to make zen with the fact that Goodreads will show this as reading one book instead of two. Sigh. I can do it. I'll be ok.
ETA: NEVER MIND, I DID IT! I AM THE GOODREADS MASTER, EVERYTHING IS COOL HERE.
George Eliot in Love by Brenda Maddox
3.0
Impulsively picked up a copy of this at The Book Barn about a year ago. Yes, it is silly.
Surprising no one, this isn't a very good book. I chose to read it because it serves the purpose of reading a George Eliot biography with a quickness -- I wanted to get through one and didn't really have time to tackle Karl -- and because I am really interested in the major romantic relationship in George Eliot's life. So, on the off-chance this book was good, or insightful or new, I was curious.
But, it is mostly dull, except for the fact that I think learning about Marian the person (as, almost, a side study of learning about Eliot the author) is always good. The tone of the book is basically set in two unsatisfying lumps: first, Marian is insecure and pathetic, and here's all the men she knew; second, then Marian met Lewes and they traveled here and here and she wrote this and this. And then this happened and then this happened. It's a book report out of an encyclopedia, except without citing any sources almost ever.
As far as the "romance" suggested by the title goes, we are basically treated with a bunch of highly unscientific speculation about who Marian may have lost her virginity to in her twenties. Thanks? That's fine I guess. I'm a little bit intrigued I guess. But give me a shred of something that isn't an eye-roller. Once she and Lewes are together, it is zero of a deduction to interpret that they were lots in love, because they talked about their happiness basically all the time.
The thing I actually disliked about the book, though, is that it paints Marian in a pretty crappy light. I am biased because she's my favorite, yet I'm sure she wasn't a saint, and probably every Victorian of her status and above was something of a pill. Still, all we get here is a picture of how clingy she was, how irrational her insecurities, how much she hung on men, how whipped Lewes was, what an idiot she was falling for guy after guy (though we don't actually know any feelings she didn't write down). She doesn't come off great, and you know that can't be the whole story. And, it's odd, because probably Brenda Maddox would say that she loves George Eliot? I think she just is not a nuanced biographer of her. Or, by being interested only in the superficiality of her personal relationships, managed to remove everything that's interesting about her thoughtfulness.
For alternative reading, the Eliot & Lewes section in Parallel Lives is only 40 pages long, but is 100x better than this whole book on the same topic. I reread it after finishing this, and still loved it.
It's a 2½, but I'm three-starring this one because it wasn't very ridiculous or offensive or inaccurate, and I learned some new things that were in fact useful to me. I wouldn't recommend it either as reading or as scholarship, though.
Surprising no one, this isn't a very good book. I chose to read it because it serves the purpose of reading a George Eliot biography with a quickness -- I wanted to get through one and didn't really have time to tackle Karl -- and because I am really interested in the major romantic relationship in George Eliot's life. So, on the off-chance this book was good, or insightful or new, I was curious.
But, it is mostly dull, except for the fact that I think learning about Marian the person (as, almost, a side study of learning about Eliot the author) is always good. The tone of the book is basically set in two unsatisfying lumps: first, Marian is insecure and pathetic, and here's all the men she knew; second, then Marian met Lewes and they traveled here and here and she wrote this and this. And then this happened and then this happened. It's a book report out of an encyclopedia, except without citing any sources almost ever.
As far as the "romance" suggested by the title goes, we are basically treated with a bunch of highly unscientific speculation about who Marian may have lost her virginity to in her twenties. Thanks? That's fine I guess. I'm a little bit intrigued I guess. But give me a shred of something that isn't an eye-roller. Once she and Lewes are together, it is zero of a deduction to interpret that they were lots in love, because they talked about their happiness basically all the time.
The thing I actually disliked about the book, though, is that it paints Marian in a pretty crappy light. I am biased because she's my favorite, yet I'm sure she wasn't a saint, and probably every Victorian of her status and above was something of a pill. Still, all we get here is a picture of how clingy she was, how irrational her insecurities, how much she hung on men, how whipped Lewes was, what an idiot she was falling for guy after guy (though we don't actually know any feelings she didn't write down). She doesn't come off great, and you know that can't be the whole story. And, it's odd, because probably Brenda Maddox would say that she loves George Eliot? I think she just is not a nuanced biographer of her. Or, by being interested only in the superficiality of her personal relationships, managed to remove everything that's interesting about her thoughtfulness.
For alternative reading, the Eliot & Lewes section in Parallel Lives is only 40 pages long, but is 100x better than this whole book on the same topic. I reread it after finishing this, and still loved it.
It's a 2½, but I'm three-starring this one because it wasn't very ridiculous or offensive or inaccurate, and I learned some new things that were in fact useful to me. I wouldn't recommend it either as reading or as scholarship, though.
Johnny Tremain: The Story of Boston in Revolt Against the British by Esther Forbes
Maybe I bought a copy of this at the U.S.S. Constitution gift shop in Boston this weekend. MAYBE I DID. AND MAYBE I DON'T CARE IF YOU KNOW IT!
The Tricky Part: A Boy's Story of Sexual Trespass, a Man's Journey to Forgiveness by Martin Moran
3.0
I always wanted to read this since I first heard about it. I finally did because I got to see the author's new play recently, another autobiographical piece, so I guess you can sort of call it a sequel? But it's about much different things, though certainly references the events in this story. It was beautiful and kind, I really loved it. (If he ever does another stint of the one-man play version of this work, I'd love to see it too.)
He's an incredibly generous storyteller, here as a memoirist about his youth. He displays sympathy for everyone. This book is a lot like the exercise I think a lot of us fantasize about: being able to look our younger selves in the eye as they go through the things we know were the hardest, and tell them we understand and they're okay and they'll be okay. It Gets Better all the way.
The book is just what it says on the cover, his extremely straightforward chronicle of Catholicism, coming out, and a very creepy long-running situation with an adult man who had sex with him as a kid. It's very subject-specific and there is a huge amount of detail about the events and emotions of all of this. It's 100% a therapeutic book for the author, and I can imagine it being something that people recovering from related events may need too.
The close focus made it a little unexciting for me sometimes, because I don't need the book for those exact things. He writes a few lovely sections about more generally relatable feelings -- the frustration of depression, the gratitude and amazement of being loved, how much work it is to forget the past. To make the things that definitely mattered a lot not matter the most forever.
I think this is the story he needed to write in order to write other stories, though, so I'm extremely grateful he was able to and is able to be free and happy as a person and an author. He has a loving view of life that is invaluable, and I hope I get to hear him talk about all of it.
He's an incredibly generous storyteller, here as a memoirist about his youth. He displays sympathy for everyone. This book is a lot like the exercise I think a lot of us fantasize about: being able to look our younger selves in the eye as they go through the things we know were the hardest, and tell them we understand and they're okay and they'll be okay. It Gets Better all the way.
The book is just what it says on the cover, his extremely straightforward chronicle of Catholicism, coming out, and a very creepy long-running situation with an adult man who had sex with him as a kid. It's very subject-specific and there is a huge amount of detail about the events and emotions of all of this. It's 100% a therapeutic book for the author, and I can imagine it being something that people recovering from related events may need too.
The close focus made it a little unexciting for me sometimes, because I don't need the book for those exact things. He writes a few lovely sections about more generally relatable feelings -- the frustration of depression, the gratitude and amazement of being loved, how much work it is to forget the past. To make the things that definitely mattered a lot not matter the most forever.
I think this is the story he needed to write in order to write other stories, though, so I'm extremely grateful he was able to and is able to be free and happy as a person and an author. He has a loving view of life that is invaluable, and I hope I get to hear him talk about all of it.
Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose
5.0
(Update May 2013)
Hi book. I am five-starring you after all, because I think about you all the time and I learned so much, and I've recommended you to everyone and thumbed through countless times to cite things. And I think my tolerance for academic-speak was raised a little bit in the last year, too, which was really the only relationship problem we had. How love can change, indeed! XO!!
(Feb. 2012)
Oh hello, now is when I catch up on all my Goodreads at once!
This is such a great plan for a book. IT IS AWESOME. I enjoyed it immensely.
The book, indeed, looks at five marriages of Victorian authors, and generally uses each example to explain a result, either of the person's work, or of their personal character.
In a way, she uses the first couple as a framing device, Thomas and Jane Carlyle. Their courtship is shown at the start of the book, their last years of marriage are shown at the end, and there are a few brief scenes throughout of times that one of the Carlyles interacted in some way with the next couple. As themselves, though, I was most interested by them as a courting couple. Jane is a heck of a sass, which pretty classically covers for quite a lot of empathetic self-doubt. She felt she was talented but with nothing original to say, so ironically, she simply became known for talking, and writing letters, and generally saying quite a lot, just as herself.
The fascinating thing about her relationship with Thomas comes at the point they decide to commit to each other: during their courtship he has spent almost all of his time praising her skill and her writing and giving her suggestions and encouragement and basically wishing that she would pursue a great ambition. She too expects great things of him. And seemingly the moment they get engaged, suddenly, he sees her only as a woman, a wife to do the things he asks, and no longer is he asking for anything intellectual. It is not flattering.
(This is also the section where the author writes something I've found myself trying to remember since reading it: "She might reject the idea of marrying him, but she had conceived it, and it seems that no matter how impossible a thing appears, if it can be imagined, it can be enacted." How a turning point works.)
I really looked forward to the John Ruskin chapter, as it of course is a deconstruction of the notorious "Actually no no no please put your clothes back on!!" unconsummated wedding-night story. What a piece of work, what a piece of work. A total cuckoo clock. I think the greatest thing about what the author brings to this chapter is a depiction of Ruskin's parents, who are awful snobbish nutters, and from whom it comes as no surprise whatever to have produced a repressed nutter of a son. (… Who may have had a thing for little girls. Er. I am going to have to read something more about that somewhere because I feel like I need to know.)
The author rather brilliantly compares the Ruskins to the marriages in Middlemarch — one similarity from her perspective, one similarity from his — which was almost too great to be true. Also, like the author's last example, this marriage too came apart at the seams around gender expectation. But there is essentially a good ending, and I really enjoyed the rest of the story, of how this marriage was finished. It's so awkward, and then so happy (for, uh, everyone who isn't Ruskin), it's almost a romantic comedy.
(Also, on the side, I enjoyed how often this chapter made me look up art: mainly Effie's modeling in her future husband's painting, and the portrait of Ruskin he was working on when they met. Similarly, I'm enchanted with this book's cover art; it's perfect — first, I thought it was simply a photograph of an old house, but it is in fact a slice from a painting of the Carlyles at their house, by a painter of Ruskin's photo-realistic school.)
(More outstanding wisdom from the author in Ruskin's chapter: "There is, I think, a kind of natural astonishment at the moments when one's personal life coincides with the great, public, recurring events of mankind, when one marries, for example, or produces a child. One is so amazed to have done it at all that one can by no means perceive it has been done badly.")
The only chapter I didn't enjoy very much was that of John Stuart Mill. It's too bad, because it's an incredibly interesting and weird situation, and I in fact liked him quite a lot. (And Harriet is… something else, if not quite likable.) They were sort of ridiculously idealistic intellectuals who began a (basically sexless) relationship while she was married, and she managed to have dominant enough a personality that her husband just kinda… let her. She seems to have been one of those people who comes in the room, merrily convinces everyone do what she wants, leaves, and everyone is left going, "uh… what just…?"
Mill himself was famous as a philosopher of great justness and belief in social equality and freedom, and was perhaps one of the fiercest feminists of the Victorian age. He saw this nontraditional partnership with someone as strong as Harriet to be exactly the right antidote to the problem of unequal marriage. He adored her so unobjectively that eventually they were a mockery, but their beliefs were fervent and clear. Because he wrote about them so straightforwardly, the author uses a lot of his own writing to lace together her ideas in this chapter. Which works, but became sort of overdone, and I felt kind of like I was reading one of those papers you write in college where you quote way too much to take up room on the page.
(But she's got it: "Of course he made her up, as we all make up the people we love.")
Now, book-lovers, I give you 100% serious warning: reading this book might make you hate Charles Dickens. Really irrecoverably hate him and his work. Unfortunately it turns out that Charles was aaaaa jeeeeeeeeerrrrrkkkk, just terrible, and there is nothing we can do about it!
I think some facts about Dickens's marriage/mistress are somewhat common knowledge, but the author's chapter on it does a marvelous job of plotting it out in great depth. The reason it's an extraordinary chapter instead of just a slugfest is because by the end of it, I felt that I really understood Charles Dickens, really well. Of course, it is really the author's interpretation that I understand so well, but it truly does feel well done and just. At the end of it I think he's pretty much an awful dingbat, but good gracious is he an interesting one.
It's truly a fascinating chapter. I think he's the writer that I'll come away from this book talking the most about. It seems like a little bit of what everyone knows about him weaves into his ugly destiny in some way. He had 10 kids, yes. He loved acting and attention and friends and company and felt he was truly the greatest person in the world, yes. He was a liiiiittle obsessed with innocent girls, yes. He just thought young women were the best, yes, right up until the point that he didn't.
Largely, the thing that came so clear for me was his genuine, true despising of adult women. They disgusted him, and he sincerely believed them responsible for their own fertility, appearance, and energy level (after having 10 kids). e.g. My wife is pregnant again, why is she doing this to me! He feels they are punishing him, and deserve to be punished in return. My favorite (?) story came when he begins to stray, fidelity-wise, by reconnecting with a teenage flame, who warns him that she is now fat and toothless. He thinks she is demurring. When she turns out to be in fact fat and toothless, he makes up an awkward excuse never to see her again, and then writes up the situation in one of his books. And admits it directly in a letter to a friend. This guy.
Of course, though, of course, my true favorite chapter here was George Eliot's (Marian Evans's), as it was bound to be. I have deeply admired her for years, and been very curious to know more about her life, particularly her infamous un-marriage. Her partner of 25 years, George Lewes, was otherwise married (its own odd situation), which meant that he and Marian never were. The author here takes no pains to conceal her enjoyment that the only truly blissfully happy couple in her book had the least "acceptable" connection. She also uses this chapter essentially to paint a picture of Marian that is crackling with empathy and admiration, and I was just hooked-lined-and-sinkered. I can hardly believe how much I truly care about her.
The main point that the author illustrates is the way that falling in love affected Marian. She was over 30, considered dull and homely, and was basically too humble to protest. She did smart editing work. She fell in love. And it transformed her, encouraged her, made her happy to take risks, and ultimately enabled her to take herself seriously as a writer. Historically, it's often suggested that because she began writing after they met, George Lewes is somehow "responsible" for George Eliot's career, but what the author firmly indicates here is that it was simply the power of the immense respect he gave Marian that changed her. A transformation they both cherished. Plus, they had great love and sex and everyone sort of laughed at them — they weren't even pretty, how dare they! — but they made a wonderful life and a wonderful partnership, and it was no accident that a great novelist found herself, too.
AND I LOVE HER.
By the time the book comes back around to talk about the Carlyles again, I've had so much fun with the other folks that they're rather a disappointment. For one thing, they turned out to be pretty much jerks. They are super outlandishly racist and elitist, even for their time and place. And the public penance thing is unsatisfying at best. I liked more when Carlyle and Mill were quoted side by side regarding a discussion of black populations. (They literally penned twin articles, one which used the horrible word with gusto, and one which pointedly didn't.) It certainly drives home who each of them ultimately were.
Really, this book is wonderful. I loved reading it and want to recommend it to every bookish friend I know. 4.5 stars for sure — I think it is just the fact that I found some parts far more interesting than others that holds it back. I'd probably reread it in chunks rather than as a whole. It also amused me how many people and anecdotes were familiar to me from Bill Bryson's book about Victorians. They are definitely cousins, these books.
Side note: I enjoyed that George Bernard Shaw comes up quite a lot on the sidelines. It turns out he had some damn cool things to say about the institution of marriage. It's made me really interested in him in a way I was not.
Random fun fact: Jane Eyre was considered to have been written by William Thackeray's governess. On account of it was kind of reminiscent of his life. And his actual mad wife in the semi-figurative attic. To me, that story just kind of says everything about what Victorians understood the boundaries of marriage could hold.
Hi book. I am five-starring you after all, because I think about you all the time and I learned so much, and I've recommended you to everyone and thumbed through countless times to cite things. And I think my tolerance for academic-speak was raised a little bit in the last year, too, which was really the only relationship problem we had. How love can change, indeed! XO!!
(Feb. 2012)
Oh hello, now is when I catch up on all my Goodreads at once!
This is such a great plan for a book. IT IS AWESOME. I enjoyed it immensely.
The book, indeed, looks at five marriages of Victorian authors, and generally uses each example to explain a result, either of the person's work, or of their personal character.
In a way, she uses the first couple as a framing device, Thomas and Jane Carlyle. Their courtship is shown at the start of the book, their last years of marriage are shown at the end, and there are a few brief scenes throughout of times that one of the Carlyles interacted in some way with the next couple. As themselves, though, I was most interested by them as a courting couple. Jane is a heck of a sass, which pretty classically covers for quite a lot of empathetic self-doubt. She felt she was talented but with nothing original to say, so ironically, she simply became known for talking, and writing letters, and generally saying quite a lot, just as herself.
The fascinating thing about her relationship with Thomas comes at the point they decide to commit to each other: during their courtship he has spent almost all of his time praising her skill and her writing and giving her suggestions and encouragement and basically wishing that she would pursue a great ambition. She too expects great things of him. And seemingly the moment they get engaged, suddenly, he sees her only as a woman, a wife to do the things he asks, and no longer is he asking for anything intellectual. It is not flattering.
(This is also the section where the author writes something I've found myself trying to remember since reading it: "She might reject the idea of marrying him, but she had conceived it, and it seems that no matter how impossible a thing appears, if it can be imagined, it can be enacted." How a turning point works.)
I really looked forward to the John Ruskin chapter, as it of course is a deconstruction of the notorious "Actually no no no please put your clothes back on!!" unconsummated wedding-night story. What a piece of work, what a piece of work. A total cuckoo clock. I think the greatest thing about what the author brings to this chapter is a depiction of Ruskin's parents, who are awful snobbish nutters, and from whom it comes as no surprise whatever to have produced a repressed nutter of a son. (… Who may have had a thing for little girls. Er. I am going to have to read something more about that somewhere because I feel like I need to know.)
The author rather brilliantly compares the Ruskins to the marriages in Middlemarch — one similarity from her perspective, one similarity from his — which was almost too great to be true. Also, like the author's last example, this marriage too came apart at the seams around gender expectation. But there is essentially a good ending, and I really enjoyed the rest of the story, of how this marriage was finished. It's so awkward, and then so happy (for, uh, everyone who isn't Ruskin), it's almost a romantic comedy.
(Also, on the side, I enjoyed how often this chapter made me look up art: mainly Effie's modeling in her future husband's painting, and the portrait of Ruskin he was working on when they met. Similarly, I'm enchanted with this book's cover art; it's perfect — first, I thought it was simply a photograph of an old house, but it is in fact a slice from a painting of the Carlyles at their house, by a painter of Ruskin's photo-realistic school.)
(More outstanding wisdom from the author in Ruskin's chapter: "There is, I think, a kind of natural astonishment at the moments when one's personal life coincides with the great, public, recurring events of mankind, when one marries, for example, or produces a child. One is so amazed to have done it at all that one can by no means perceive it has been done badly.")
The only chapter I didn't enjoy very much was that of John Stuart Mill. It's too bad, because it's an incredibly interesting and weird situation, and I in fact liked him quite a lot. (And Harriet is… something else, if not quite likable.) They were sort of ridiculously idealistic intellectuals who began a (basically sexless) relationship while she was married, and she managed to have dominant enough a personality that her husband just kinda… let her. She seems to have been one of those people who comes in the room, merrily convinces everyone do what she wants, leaves, and everyone is left going, "uh… what just…?"
Mill himself was famous as a philosopher of great justness and belief in social equality and freedom, and was perhaps one of the fiercest feminists of the Victorian age. He saw this nontraditional partnership with someone as strong as Harriet to be exactly the right antidote to the problem of unequal marriage. He adored her so unobjectively that eventually they were a mockery, but their beliefs were fervent and clear. Because he wrote about them so straightforwardly, the author uses a lot of his own writing to lace together her ideas in this chapter. Which works, but became sort of overdone, and I felt kind of like I was reading one of those papers you write in college where you quote way too much to take up room on the page.
(But she's got it: "Of course he made her up, as we all make up the people we love.")
Now, book-lovers, I give you 100% serious warning: reading this book might make you hate Charles Dickens. Really irrecoverably hate him and his work. Unfortunately it turns out that Charles was aaaaa jeeeeeeeeerrrrrkkkk, just terrible, and there is nothing we can do about it!
I think some facts about Dickens's marriage/mistress are somewhat common knowledge, but the author's chapter on it does a marvelous job of plotting it out in great depth. The reason it's an extraordinary chapter instead of just a slugfest is because by the end of it, I felt that I really understood Charles Dickens, really well. Of course, it is really the author's interpretation that I understand so well, but it truly does feel well done and just. At the end of it I think he's pretty much an awful dingbat, but good gracious is he an interesting one.
It's truly a fascinating chapter. I think he's the writer that I'll come away from this book talking the most about. It seems like a little bit of what everyone knows about him weaves into his ugly destiny in some way. He had 10 kids, yes. He loved acting and attention and friends and company and felt he was truly the greatest person in the world, yes. He was a liiiiittle obsessed with innocent girls, yes. He just thought young women were the best, yes, right up until the point that he didn't.
Largely, the thing that came so clear for me was his genuine, true despising of adult women. They disgusted him, and he sincerely believed them responsible for their own fertility, appearance, and energy level (after having 10 kids). e.g. My wife is pregnant again, why is she doing this to me! He feels they are punishing him, and deserve to be punished in return. My favorite (?) story came when he begins to stray, fidelity-wise, by reconnecting with a teenage flame, who warns him that she is now fat and toothless. He thinks she is demurring. When she turns out to be in fact fat and toothless, he makes up an awkward excuse never to see her again, and then writes up the situation in one of his books. And admits it directly in a letter to a friend. This guy.
Of course, though, of course, my true favorite chapter here was George Eliot's (Marian Evans's), as it was bound to be. I have deeply admired her for years, and been very curious to know more about her life, particularly her infamous un-marriage. Her partner of 25 years, George Lewes, was otherwise married (its own odd situation), which meant that he and Marian never were. The author here takes no pains to conceal her enjoyment that the only truly blissfully happy couple in her book had the least "acceptable" connection. She also uses this chapter essentially to paint a picture of Marian that is crackling with empathy and admiration, and I was just hooked-lined-and-sinkered. I can hardly believe how much I truly care about her.
The main point that the author illustrates is the way that falling in love affected Marian. She was over 30, considered dull and homely, and was basically too humble to protest. She did smart editing work. She fell in love. And it transformed her, encouraged her, made her happy to take risks, and ultimately enabled her to take herself seriously as a writer. Historically, it's often suggested that because she began writing after they met, George Lewes is somehow "responsible" for George Eliot's career, but what the author firmly indicates here is that it was simply the power of the immense respect he gave Marian that changed her. A transformation they both cherished. Plus, they had great love and sex and everyone sort of laughed at them — they weren't even pretty, how dare they! — but they made a wonderful life and a wonderful partnership, and it was no accident that a great novelist found herself, too.
AND I LOVE HER.
By the time the book comes back around to talk about the Carlyles again, I've had so much fun with the other folks that they're rather a disappointment. For one thing, they turned out to be pretty much jerks. They are super outlandishly racist and elitist, even for their time and place. And the public penance thing is unsatisfying at best. I liked more when Carlyle and Mill were quoted side by side regarding a discussion of black populations. (They literally penned twin articles, one which used the horrible word with gusto, and one which pointedly didn't.) It certainly drives home who each of them ultimately were.
Really, this book is wonderful. I loved reading it and want to recommend it to every bookish friend I know. 4.5 stars for sure — I think it is just the fact that I found some parts far more interesting than others that holds it back. I'd probably reread it in chunks rather than as a whole. It also amused me how many people and anecdotes were familiar to me from Bill Bryson's book about Victorians. They are definitely cousins, these books.
Side note: I enjoyed that George Bernard Shaw comes up quite a lot on the sidelines. It turns out he had some damn cool things to say about the institution of marriage. It's made me really interested in him in a way I was not.
Random fun fact: Jane Eyre was considered to have been written by William Thackeray's governess. On account of it was kind of reminiscent of his life. And his actual mad wife in the semi-figurative attic. To me, that story just kind of says everything about what Victorians understood the boundaries of marriage could hold.
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
5.0
Bought a copy of this edition at The Book Barn this spring, 1929 Everyman's Library.
Signed by "Eleanor M. Murphy, October 1930."
Signed by "Eleanor M. Murphy, October 1930."