Book Review: Silas Marner
Nov. 12th, 2009 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerAbout fifteen years ago – my goodness, I’ve gotten old – I saw the Wishbone version of George Eliot’s Silas Marner, and it left me such a lasting impression that I spent most of the time reading the book murmuring, “Okay, when is insert next plot twist here going to happen?”
So that probably colored my reading of the book somewhat.
It’s a nicely written book, but I can’t love George Eliot the way I love Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte. She’s too sentimental, which is funny given that her novels deal with serious, ugly issues (infanticide, opium addiction, anti-Semitism…) which Austen ignores and Bronte rather skims over, but there it is. In Austen and Bronte, you have to work for your happy ending. In Eliot, it comes to you.
Quite literally, in the case of Silas Marner.
And that makes for less than satisfying reading.
So that probably colored my reading of the book somewhat.
It’s a nicely written book, but I can’t love George Eliot the way I love Jane Austen or Charlotte Bronte. She’s too sentimental, which is funny given that her novels deal with serious, ugly issues (infanticide, opium addiction, anti-Semitism…) which Austen ignores and Bronte rather skims over, but there it is. In Austen and Bronte, you have to work for your happy ending. In Eliot, it comes to you.
Quite literally, in the case of Silas Marner.
And that makes for less than satisfying reading.
