Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871)

I am in the midst of doing a lot of college reading. Perhaps it is a way to go back to college as a middle aged woman without having to take the time to go to class--I am doing all the reading for two courses that two of my sons are taking. I don't have to sit in class (which I of course have no time to do at this point--seriously, doing the reading is a task that I have some struggles with some weeks!), but I have someone else (a college professor, no less) guiding my reading selections, and I have someone to talk about it with. So far (and we are at midterm) it has been grand. And it is in this context that I read 'Middlemarch'. Coincidentally it appeared on a list of 100 books that you should read before you die, and while I might quibble with some of the selections on it, this is a sweeping Victorian novel that should not be missed. The novel came out serially--which poses some challenges to the author--Dickens combated it with constantly recapping the action, but what Eliot does is create a book about a place, and then the people in it come second. The sections concern various groups of interconnected people, and the overarching theme, beyond the social structure and expectations of Victorian England, is finding satisfaction in life. In Eliot's mind, that seems to be strongly tied to making the right match in life--which is not so much finding the right person, but finding a person who will stick with you through thick and thin. The book she has written gave her ample opportunity to expose us to a number of choices, many of which are quite relevant today (hence the edurance of the novel over time--like Shakespeare, the themes still speak to us). It is a dense read--it is a slow 880 page novel. But there is much to savor here, and the book is neatly wrapped up at the end, so we are not left hanging as to what happened to everyone.