George Eliot's most acclaimed work, Middlemarch displays the author at the peak of her powers.
The Classic - Middlemarch by George Eliot
"If you really read this novel, you will find out about yourself."
In 2015 Michael Gorra wrote a piece for the BBC claiming George Eliot's Middlemarch was the most remarkable British novel, using the sentence above as justification. Many modern critics agree with the statement as the story is almost a study in balancing a narrator's perspective with other lives they intertwine with, all while Eliot was throwing in her own comments, questions, and empathy to the other characters in the view.
Other critics, and often ones at her time of publication, called it a morbid story. Eliot felt women's literature's unfair confinement to domestic lives ending with a happy marriage was a disservice to reality. A union makes up more than one person, and as people moved along their web of influence, they were caught in a balancing act between their own experiences and thoughts to the others that each decision or thought affected. Throughout the story, you see each main character grapple with the decisions made but also empathize with the decision made by another character affected.
Enjoy a excerpt of Middlemarch.
Middlemarch
by Eliot, George
George Eliot's most acclaimed work, Middlemarch displays the author at the peak of her powers, weaving multiple plotlines and a memorable collection of characters together to create a wide-ranging novel of remarkable insight.
First appearing in 1871, Middlemarch is a historical novel set 42 years before its publication. Political and social concerns of the era are present but serve as background and contrast to four compelling plotlines focused on a set of unforgettable characters striving against circumstance, each other, and themselves. Powerful themes, religion, love, marriage, education, society's treatment of women and much more, are dealt with as fully fused elements of the story and integral parts of the lives of the characters. The author conveys a sweeping vision of small-town England in the Victorian era, the rich and the poor, the people of the countryside and the people of the city, while unspooling several interlocked storylines full of passion, uncertainty, and suspense. Middlemarch received a mixed reaction upon its initial appearance but has gained in standing among critics and general readers until it is now commonly considered one of the high points of 19th-century fiction and even of English literature as a whole.
Our Modern Companions
We've paired this book with a few different options. All three use George Eliot's multinarrative perspectives that changed the course of the story, but we went a few different routes in literary style.
Gone Girl
by Flynn, Gillian
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The "mercilessly entertaining" (Vanity Fair) instant classic "about the nature of identity and the terrible secrets that can survive and thrive in even the most intimate relationships" (Lev Grossman, Time)--now featuring never-before-published deleted scenes
NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY TIME AND ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Janet Maslin, The New York Times - People - Entertainment Weekly - O: The Oprah Magazine - Slate - Kansas City Star - USA Today - Christian Science Monitor
On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media--as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents--the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter--but is he really a killer?
If I Had Your Face
by Cha, Frances
A riveting debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, about four young women making their way in a world defined by impossible standards of beauty, after-hours room salons catering to wealthy men, ruthless social hierarchies, and K-pop mania
"Powerful and provocative . . . a novel about female strength, spirit, resilience--and the solace that friendship can sometimes provide."--The Washington Post
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, Esquire, Bustle, BBC, New York Post, InStyle
Kyuri is an achingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a Seoul "room salon," an exclusive underground bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake threatens her livelihood.
Kyuri's roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the heir to one of the country's biggest conglomerates.
Down the hall in their building lives Ara, a hairstylist whose two preoccupations sustain her: an obsession with a boy-band pop star, and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that she hopes will change her life.
And Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed trying to have a baby that she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise in Korea's brutal economy.
Together, their stories tell a gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal, in which their tentative friendships may turn out to be the thing that ultimately saves them.
Fates and Furies
by Groff, Lauren
A FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: THE WASHINGTON POST, NPR, TIME, THE SEATTLE TIMES, MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, SLATE, LIBRARY JOURNAL, KIRKUS, AND MANY MORE
From the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Florida, Matrix, and the highly-anticipated The Vaster Wilds: an exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception.
Fates and Furies is a literary masterpiece that defies expectation. A dazzling examination of a marriage, it is also a portrait of creative partnership written by one of the best writers of her generation.
Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.
At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. With stunning revelations and multiple threads, and in prose that is vibrantly alive and original, Groff delivers a deeply satisfying novel about love, art, creativity, and power that is unlike anything that has come before it. Profound, surprising, propulsive, and emotionally riveting, it stirs both the mind and the heart.
Discover more classics and their modern companion each week.