Sunday, October 16, 2011

Middlemarch & others

Based on the strong urgings of a friend (she lent me her copy) I have been reading Middlemarch for the past few weeks. It is a great novel, certainly not light.

I had started before, for free on my e-reader; but could not get past the first chapter or so. I took a dislike to Dorothea and her self-martyring ways; guilt-tripping her younger sister about liking their late mother's jewels, the early passage about horseback riding:

"Riding was an indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way and always looked forward to renouncing it."

But I worked on it. Especially after my fr The people are such people, very well rounded characters. But, if some people say Jane Austen has a bit of a cruel and satirical eye, well George Eliot's eye is that trebled. It is realism, and not happy realism. It is hard to enjoy a novel when you don't like the characters much. But time moved on. I began to feel sorry for Dorothea on her honeymoon. I met the Garths and liked them a teeny bit, especially Mary. Lydgate annoys me, but I feel a bit sorry for him too. I suppose that is the effect that Eliot is going for? That we see them and dislike most of them, but also pity them.

But I have come to understand that a lot of what I get out of reading is what most people get from watching TV sitcoms or cop shows - escapism and relaxation. Definitely not what I get from Middlemarch. I may be a bit old for this, she makes me feel almost too much.

So, last week, I had to flee to Trollope for a bit of light relief. Re-read/skimmed Can You Forgive Her and started up Phineas Finn. His realism is not so keen and he has characters like Mrs. Greenow and her suitors to make us laugh.

Then. I dipped into some Neal Stephenson, re-read The Diamond Age and just started his new book REAMDE. But, I think I will go back to Middlemarch later this week; I'm about 60% done.

Other stuff, Dorothy Sayer's apologetic work: Letters to a Diminished Church, much in the same line as CS Lewis's works, or (so the inter-webs say) GK Chesterson.

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