Rating: 
Summary: Amazingly funny and penetrating!
Review: I have had a copy of this book on my shelf for years without reading it. It was so very thick, the print so small, the pages so thin! It looked dauntingly long and dull. But when I finally picked it up out of a sense of obligation (after all, I majored in English, and it is a highly acclaimed classic) I was amazed to find myself laughing out loud on the very first page! Dorothea, Eliot's heroine, is SO very earnest, SO idealistic and ardent! She would never be so tawdry as to fuss with her hair and dress, or wear (gasp!) jewelry in public! She is interested only in bettering the lives of the poor in their neighborhood (you could visualize her at the fore of a modern anti-war protest). But when her sister draws her into trying on their mother's old jewelry, the pure beauty of an emerald ring inspires her to decisively choose it as her own. And she stubbbornly ignores any inconsistency between that decision and her ideals. But her idealism traps her into marriage with a man who is not at all what she believes. She sees him as a paragon of learning, questing the seas of knowledge with fearless curiousity. In actuality, he turns out to be a cautious and small-minded scholar, drily obsessed with minor points of criticism on others works. Poor Dorothea strives to find ways to hold constant in her love in the face of ugly truth. And when she meets young Will Ladislaw, a man of similar idealism and energy, she fights to stay on her moral high ground. Thank goodness the dry old scholar dies! But even after death, he manages to poison the possibility of Dorothea and Will ever making a life together. Around this couple swarm their relatives and acquaintances, and others quests for their best lives. Each couple and each character is amusing and absorbing in their own way. Eliot's characters are introduced and drawn so very well that each personality is fully believable and real. But beyond that, Eliot looks at all of them, the best and the worst, from a viewpoint of loving and gentle amusement. Her pithy comments are hilarious, but never malicious. She draws the reader into her own frame of mind, and invites us to look at the variety of our fellow humans with compassion and laughter. In spite of its length, and several dizzy plunges into despair, this is a light and lively story, very readable and heartwarming.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful novel, especially for the "experienced"
Review: One of the joys of reading great works of literature, indeed of reading in general, is RE-READING, seeing all the wonderful things you missed the first time around. _Middlemarch_ is such a book, so much so that I have been astounded upon rereading it. I was assigned this book twice in college, and while I can certainly understand why this book would be studied in literature courses because of the value it contributed to the form of novel writing in general, I firmly believe this book can only be appreciated fully by someone with a little more experience under their belt than the average college co-ed. So, if you remember trudging through this large tome in the early morning hours of your college days, finding it unbearable, give it another go once you're 30 or 40 -- I think you'll be more than pleasantly surprised. I can honestly say this is one of the books that is closest to my heart now. Truly moving.
Rating:
Summary: magnificent
Review: Considered Eliot's masterpiece, Middlemarch is an extremely well-written slice of Victorian life in a fictious English town. The story is well-woven, and characters are very believable. Brilliant. However the book is lengthy and, like Eliot's other novels, the first half is slow-moving. Not for the impatient.
Rating:
Summary: A Literary Epiphany to any Reader Who Takes it Seriously
Review: I remember finding this conservative and space-efficient paperback on the shelves at Waldenbooks and deciding to give it a try since I had heard of it through a copy of Anna Karenina. The essay had compared the two, but didn't say that George Eliot acheived five times more with this book than Tolstoy did with Anna. I have never read such superb writing or been lead through such a meaningful story. Everything in this book is absolutely neccessary to Eliot's main idea. The realistic and honestly depicted characters' babbling even holds weight in her plot. This book shows so many different plots and how they parallel eachother, that it is almost mosaic (except every little piece is as splendid and brilliant as the other). Eliot teaches us through her characters and the dilemas she so craftily places them in, about reverance for life and community. If you pay attention to the narrative of this sage, you will find yourself believing "no man is an island", if you already don't, and your sense of responsibility and duty will become ven more apparent to you. This is the book that remains closest to my heart; this is the author who, time after time, I have never been disappointed in. I won't give a single thing away. If you enjoy a good intellectual novel, then you won't be disappointed. I promise, you will be amazed 6 chapters through the book and astounded at the end. There aren't any notes for this book; you'll enjoy it uninterrupted. Reward yourself with this book or any other by George Eliot ( the Mill on the Floss is almost as good).
Rating:
Summary: simply amazing
Review: One of the things that strikes me again and again when I read "literature" of past centuries is how men and women are so much the same today as they were then. Basically, "Middlemarch" is a novel about making bad choices, enduring those choices (OK, that is where it departs from modernity: today, people would probably entice Dorothea to divorce Causabon), and managing to live despite tragedy and sadness. This is one of the few books I have ever read where I laughed out loud at some passages, and yet started to cry at others (particularly affecting is the one where, after saying goodby to Will for what she thinks is the last time, Dorothea takes a miniature portrait of his grandmother and cradles it in her hand). This book is utterly amazing. It is not for the drenched-in-modernity people who want a quick, direct read - there are lots of characters to follow and many digressions. It's not a quick read. Yes, parts of it do drag. But the parts that don't, speak to the heart. You can think of Middle march as life in miniature: there are heartbreaking times, amusing times, good times, bad times, times you simply have to endure. And you learn from it, too. I think a lot of negative reviews of classic novels come from people who were made to read them in school. I, too, complained about some of the books I had to read. But try them again - when you have time to savor them, or when greater maturity makes them more accessible to you. I know I would not have enjoyed Middlemarch at 16; I was too callow and had no understanding of the real pain people go through when they make the wrong decisions in life. Now, at 30, and having made some bad decisions, the book is deeply meaningful to me.
Rating:
Summary: stark realism, beautifully portrayed
Review: Eliot really delves deeply into her characters' psyches, and this makes her writings so powerful. She presents more realism than most modern readers are used to; and, I'm personally grateful for the little appendix of notes at the end of my book.. they helped me understand the social/political climate of the day, and some of Eliot's historical references (which would otherwise be over the heads of the avg. American). Sadly, she lacks the hopefulness that comes across in Dickens' works, or in C. Bronte's Jane Eyre. Still, this is a brilliant work which deserves it's place among the greats of English literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Why? Why?
Review: I HAD to read this book for my high school senior english class. I started reading it and to this day I do not understand why the author had to use 771 pages for a great story. This book wuold have been perfect if it had not been so drawn out. At some points it even gets tortorous. Read this book if you have all the time AND pacience in the world ONLY. It is just too BLAH!
Rating: 
Summary: Fine literature, but . . .
Review: There is no question that this novel is a work of fine literature and an unusually in-depth portrait of the lives of a few characters. On this merit alone, it is worth reading. But . . . I found the book, despite its astuteness, to be rather dull and dry, and ultimately boring. While I appreciate detail, I also appreciate aesthetic description, and her ongoing passages were simply not amusing enough to keep me interested. Don't get me wrong: I understand that literature is not all about feel-good entertainment. But this novel is as lacking in the aesthetic department as it is brilliant in the technical/analytical. And when a book truly bores you, what difference does it make how fine a novel it is?
Rating:
Summary: the best
Review: this is quite simply, the best novel in the English language. Read it at all costs.
Rating:
Summary: Essential stuff
Review: For its cutting insight into her character's minds and her ability to keep true to each of their personalities, George Eliot's Middlemarch is unmatched. She gets to the heart of the matter with such sensitivity to the myriad ways her characters come to know themselves, their restrictions and their admissions both painful and happy, that it is often breathtaking for the reader. Maybe the first novel I've read whose characters are so engaging you wish you could meet each in person-- a novel which I don't want to end. I very much recommend it.
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