I had been put off George Eliot by my English teacher at school, who had a strong dislike of 'Middlemarch' that soon communicated itself to me. In a way this was a good thing, as I soon found myself enjoying 'Silas Marner' much more than I had expected, having expected to hate it. It is a convincing illustration of parochial English country life, with the short-sightedness and inherent distrust in all things 'foreign' typical of society at that time. Eliot is easier to read than I thought she would be, and she is also a fine storyteller. Maybe it's time to take another look at 'Middlemarch.' ( )

I don't like my chances of being able to say anything new about something that has been around since 1861. The story is a simple one, and the themes are both eternal and easily discerned : redemption, the emptiness of money compared to love and the hypocrisy of those vested with wealth, prestige and power.

For me, the novel sagged after the first few chapters, but picked up again, and then some, shortly after the half way mark. Even in a more leisurely age, Eliot must have had a purpose in introducing villagers that seem to spend a lot of time sitting around looking jolly, and taking many pages to do so. A couple of prominent characters, the pristine Eppie and her consort Aaron are less than interesting, but Silas and the tortured Godfrey Cass more than make up for it. The last couple of chapters really tugged at the heart, but it was honestly a bit of a slog to get there. ( )

This book was a real-life Book Circle read that, well, got mixed reviews. Some people thought the writing was brilliant and others found it dated; some people thought it was too short, others too long for the short story they felt it truly was and not the novel it's pretending to be.

I think it's a lovely book. I think Silas is about as honestly drawn and cannily observed a character as fiction offers. I think the village of Raveloe is as real as my own village of Hempstead. It's a delight to read about real people, presented without editorial snark, in a book from the 19th century.

And therein the book's real achievement. When it was published in 1861, it was a revolutionary tract! The hoi polloi were not to be represented in Art, and novels were then most definitely considered Art, unless they were romanticized, made into prettier or uglier or in some way extreme examples of a Point of View. Simple, honest, direct portrayal of people that novel-readers employed but never conversed with?! Shocking!

A book of great importance, then, for its groundbreaking treatment of The People. But also...and this is the reason it helped wreak the revolution whose Robespierres and Dantons were Hemingway and Company...it is a simple story of a man's journey down an ever-widening path that leads to enlightenment, told without A Message or A Moral, in prose that remains graceful 150 years later.

If you read it in high school, don't blame IT for the hatred your English teacher left you feeling...blame the teacher. It's not fairly presented in English courses. Read it as an adult, and judge it for itself. Maybe it'll be to your personal taste, maybe not, but I think a grown-up read of a book this seminal to all the others we read today, never thinking about how improbable their existence is, isn't too much to ask. ( )

I do have to say that Ms Eliot tends to disagree with me, and as such, I find her very hard to read. (Turns out that giving up on Middlemarch wasn't a one-off disagreement.) For some reason, I have to re-read sentences, I have to think about what she's trying, and it's never an easy read. Why this slim volume (a mere 186 pages) took nearly a month to read, I think!

For example, the bit that I read over and over again (and still don't quite understand) was actually quoted again in the afterword (argh! I had enough trouble with it the first time around!):

"Favourable Chance... is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in... The evil principle deprecated in that religion is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind."
Translations into plain English are appreciated.

While Silas's experiences were interesting, he wasn't a terribly likable character or a very interesting person. I suppose I should have considered myself lucky that he wasn't really around for most of the book, which was really about other people while he was the catalyst for the plot. Then when you add in the squire and his badly behaved sons, we've got another bunch of unlikable people to read about.

It wasn't until the rather sweet (if a bit too sweet at times, she might give other readers diabetes) Nancy turned up that I finally started to enjoy this book. And she doesn't turn up until half way through! And then cheeky little Eppie appeared, and I got suckered in.

Mum told me that her Aunty Pat (who looked after her for many years) loved this book, which is what kept me going. (And Dad's recently discovered Ms Eliot, and enjoys her books, so that was a second incentive to got give up.) Aunty Pat apparently loved the coal hole scene, and I must say I did too. In lesser hands it could have been mawkish and sentimental, but I was giggling. Ms Eliot knows her cheeky children, and this characterisation was pretty spot on.

I do have to say that the positives outweighed the negatives - the second half was interesting, the pages just raced past, the characters were believable - but the sluggish first half really slowed me down, even though it had its moments (the descriptions of the Squire and his family, plus the whole village, were very well done; particular mention to the scene in the pub where a number of villagers get into a discussion and argument they've obviously gone over and over and over again on many a night). ( )

Eliot seems to write work after work of masterpieces. ( )