Let’s hear it for Middlemarch!
Well, it’s taken me until my 50s to get round to it, but I’ve finally read Middlemarch. And I can say, without question, that it is one of the best, most rewarding novels I’ve ever read.
I mean, what George Eliot, Mary Ann Evans, gave us is nothing short of astonishing.
I’m not sure what I was expecting exactly. I’d embarked on it six months ago, partly in a desperate bid to restore an attention span pinched to almost nothing by years of moronic scrolling, but I’m so glad I did.
What makes it so great? I wouldn’t presume to put a finger on it, but apart from its virtuosic plotting, it’s profoundly wise without ever being ponderous (except perhaps when poor Mr. Casaubon is speaking), and, my goodness, it’s funny! I didn’t realise how funny it would be. And funny without any trace of cruelty.
By pure coincidence, it was ranked the greatest ever English novel in a recent Guardian poll, and I really can’t argue with that. I just have this insatiable urge to evangelise, hence me rambling here to a bunch of internet strangers, a lot of whom have already read it, and will doubtless need no persuasion.
Now that I’m a confirmed George Eliot groupie, which of her other novels would you recommend I read next?