museless aiming
- 6 items tagged 1979
- 1 item tagged cloud
- 6 items tagged cms
- 10 items tagged film
- 4 items tagged git
- 1 item tagged hifi
- 1 item tagged linux
- 4 items tagged literature
- 26 items tagged music
- 4 items tagged musing
- 2 items tagged novels
- 1 item tagged photography
- 29 items tagged reviews
- 1 item tagged software
- 1 item tagged tagging
- 15 items tagged tech
- 3 items tagged vcs
- 1 item tagged writing
- 2 items tagged zsh
The Mill on the Floss
This book is not a spectacular read. Its plot would be unsustainable were it not for George Eliot's piercingly brilliant insights into human nature, which hang extraneously on its uneventful narrative. Unlike Middlemarch, the web of characters in this novel is perfunctory, and altogether rather unsympathetic and uninteresting. Although you witness the long lives of the characters, you never feel as if you have aged with them as you do in her later novels.
The ending is a bit like the ending of Scarface -- either you love it and it redeems the work, or you hate it and the work fails. I'm in the former camp, as I didn't mind the deus ex machina as much as some other people seem to. I saw it not as Eliot facilely giving up on an irretrievable plot, but more like the analogous biblical event, with Eliot as the God of her characters (intentionally vague to avoid spoiling it).
If you loved Middlemarch it's worth a look, but to be honest I was a little disappointed. I still have a great respect for George Eliot's dazzling prose, but the story isn't great in this case.