Middlemarch by George Eliot

Every time, I finish a great classic like this one, I I remember how much I love classics and wish I had time to read them. I was able to finish this because I listened the first 50% with some immersive reading over Victoria Day long weekend. The last 50% I read in text on a day that I took off time from work. The audiobook was wonderfully narrated by Juliet Stevenson who is probably one of my favourite narrators. She did all the characters so well. This is one of those rare books that while reading it that I was looking forward to rereading and relistening to it again one day.

“People are almost always better than their neighbors think they are.”

This was my second Eliot novel after the tumultuous (in a good way) The Mill on the Floss. Eliot wrote her characters so intelligently. There was such consideration on their flaws, strengths, and their complexities.

“Character is not cut in marble – it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do.”

Many of the characters were not exactly likeable. I did become invested in Dorothea and Will’s love story. There was so much angst and unresolved tension. Eliot was really able to write tension and attraction so well. I liked Dorothea as I I did Maggie Tulliver even though both heroines had their naiveties and shortcomings.

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

The writing is flawless. I marvelled at how she was able to write so well. It was slow at times but I enjoyed the writing craft. It’s acerbic and funny and extremely well done.

“He once called her his basil plant, and when she asked for an explanation said that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man’s brains.”

My friend and I chose it as a buddy read last winter, but I kept hearing people were reading it this spring including some of my favourite podcast hosts. It felt like a mini Middlemarch zeitgeist.

The last line of the book is probably one of my favourite last lines that I’ve read in a very long time. In fact I’ve reread it a couple of times because John Hodgman finished it the day after I did and posted it. I actually teared up rereading it.

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

Great read. I look forward to more classics and another George Eliot novel. I am going to buy a nicer hardcover edition of this book.

1.5-1.75x. 2x immersive. May 17-21, 2024.