George Eliot’s classic Victorian novel. Definitely an enjoyable read, if a bit long. Following several couples’ relationships, Middlemarch has much to say about relationships both romantic and social, money, and social class.

I really enjoyed this a lot more than I allowed people to believe I would.

George Eliot’s classic Victorian novel covers a lot of ground, a lot of topics, and has a lot of characters. It has its failings–like where may I ask are the servants stories?–but in all is really quite a masterpiece. Nothing about it is intirely unpredictable, which the conclusion explains as irrelevant, the point being simply to tell the story of those unsung.

Just to cover a few things of interest, and general motifs that I took from the novel

• Marriage is only fun if you are stupid and complacent
• Chances are, you will fail in your largest ventures
• Women should have individuality and spirit (unless their husbands wish otherwise)
• Someone’s opinion will actually be accurate, it is just a matter of deciding which person is predicting the future
• Money & God are incredibly relevant in all aspects of life
• None of this matters because you will die and then simply remembered because you married an old and boring scholar and then within a year of his death you married his cousin–making you, not a nice person.

But the story is well told, and most of it stays quite interesting. I do not regret working through all 800 pages, my only sadness comes from only reading a single book in the month of September. I recommend this to fast readers or those with much patience and perserverance.