I read a newspaper report where Andrew Motion (I think) listed ten works of literature that ought to be mandatory for English students. Various commentators reviewed his list, and the one that none of them disagreed with was "Middlemarch", so I thought I'd give it a go.

What a treat! I can't fault Andrew Motion's choice either: this book was a wonderful read. I don't feel able to summarise the book, so just include some of my impressions having finished it now.

Although it was published around the same time as The Woman in White, and shared some of the themes (e.g. unhappy honeymoons in Venice, people being constrained by social convention, "Italians with White Mice"), the writing style is completely different. Where TWIW was plot-driven, Middlemarch does have storylines, but they are incidental to the main business of the novel, which is the description of how the characters deal with the situations they find themselves in. And again, even though this book predates Freud, there is a lot of exploration of psychological motivations.

The writing style is beautiful; it seemed that practically every sentence must have been crafted - or perhaps people used really to speak like this? You sometimes have to work a bit to parse some of the more elliptical sentences, but the effort is always worthwhile.

One thing about listening to the book was that there were many occasions where (if I'd been reading a printed copy) I would have underlined sections in order to be able to revisit them after finishing the book. But like travelling on a train through a beautiful landscape, there always seemed to be more to savour, and perhaps it will be better to rediscover them when I read it again. Having said that, there were a couple of occasions where I lost my place in the tape and ended up listening to a whole side over again, and this was almost as enjoyable as hearing it afresh.

The only criticism would be that I thought the ending worked out a bit too tidily, and perhaps it would have been more faithful to the feel of the book if Dorothea hadn't ended the book so happily. But it's hard to complain when the tribute paid to her in the finale is so moving.

I couldn't fault Maureen O'Brien's reading, except to say perhaps it has spoiled me because I won't be able to think of the characters without hearing her voices. I especially liked her characterisations of Mr. Brooke and Celia.

I do hope that the rest of Eliot's books turn out to be as good as this one...

Completed : 19-Jun-2003 (audiobook, read by Maureen O'Brien)

Completed : 26-Apr-2005 (audiobook, read by Maureen O'Brien)