Book info

• Title Middlemarch
• Author George Eliot
• Year 1872
• Genre Classic

George Eliot’s most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose pioneering medical methods, combined with an imprudent marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamond, threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past.

Thoughts

I’d not really heard of this one before I sat down to read it, and once I was about halfway through I could see why. There are some interesting twists and turns to the story, but mostly I found it quite dull. The characters weren’t particularly engaging, all of them a bit irritating in their own way. It’s good to make sure your protagonists aren’t overly perfect, but then again you can make them too human as well.

I read to the end, and enjoyed some of the plotlines, the way things worked out in the end, but for a good proportion of the book it seemed like everyone was very unhappy and there was little they could do about it. In summary, then, it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve read, but I can’t admit to finding it very memorable.

Rating: 2 / 5