Rating: 
Summary: I suposse a classic
Review: Well, here is Middlemarch considered a masterpiece by every critic death or alive, from V.Woolf to Harold Bloom, from G. Steiner to italo Calvino, so i suposse one has to read alot to get to apreciate this book in its full height. But that will always go contrary to the pleasure of reading. The book is OK, but i think getting old wrongly. Compared to Austen novels it is a heavy, bored, intellectual, pretentious book. The characters are good, but somehow, by the slowness of her style you star to not care about them. The politics and religion are a nuissance. Maybe it will stand as a good non fiction documentary of how life was the and there, but as fiction you have to be to erudite to get pleasure
Rating: 
Summary: An intellectual paradise
Review: What to say about a book like "Middlemarch"? It is needless to say, at 800+ pages, a little heavy, and might very well try the casual reader's patience. I fancy myself a fairly quick and discerning reader - but; this took me over two weeks to read, and I found my interest waning in and out for most of the novel. It is therefor, not something I would quickly recommend to just anyone.
However; I adress this to the student of Victorian literature,the student of history, and the aspiring novelist. To you, "Middlemarch" is a goldmine. The subtitle:"A study of provincial life" says it all. George Eliott touches on Religion, politics, Business dealings, and above all marriage; all set in the late 1820's early 1830's, before the Reform bill. Though it encompasses the lives of several families and individuals in the Middlemarch county, it centers around two in particular: Dorothea Brooke, the idealist woman, who traps herself in a loveless marriage; and Lydgate, an ambitious young doctor, who finds his marriage to a selfish and vain woman, the chief factor that causes the loss of his medical ambitions and his financial and personal ruin. It is the study of human nature, and emphasizes the role that chance plays in everyone's lives. It is also valuable to the aspiring novelist, to study for the characteration, and plot twists alone. And though it is a rather thick book, and at times can become a little dry by the long pages of narrative rambling, it is a great example of the intellectual depth of one of the great woman novelists of the nineteenth century.
Rating: 
Summary: A masterpiece, pure and simple!
Review: This book is very high on my list of favourite books of all time, and it is thought to be George Eliots' masterpiece. It is wonderfully grand novel that covers a lot of territory in a lot of pages. There are four main plotlines in the book, and Ms. Eliot develops each of them to the fullest without letting any of them get lost in the shuffle. There is the story of Dorothea Brooke, the story of Lydgate's marriage, the history of Mary Garth and the fall of the banker, Bulstrode. The book is a masterpiece because of the storyline and the characters which she does so very well, but it's also a masterpiece because it is a very substantial work of great psychological and moral penetration. I can't say anymore about the book, since my words cannot hope to convey the grandeur of it, but it is a "Must Read" for anyone who loves great literature and purity of the English language. Definitely another "desert island" book for me.
Rating: 
Summary: help....
Review: I read The Mill on the Floss ten years ago and loved it. This book is truly trying my patience however. I'm on page 150 and all I want to do is throw the thing in the garbage. The writing is manic, and the author can't seem to stick with one idea long enough to bring any intellectual or emothional closure to a single one of her reflections. Now let's bring in this historical allusion, and oh let's not forget tying in some miscellaneous histroical detail about Milton's life to Dorthea's devotion to Caussabon, but wait, now we have a chance to show off that we've made keen philosophical observations about the life of a rural minister... all on the same page!! It's like Jane Austen on speed, and it's not any much fun.
I can see why this book was forgotten for so many years, I just can't figure out why the powers that be bothered to resurrect it. I chalk it up to 19th century literary feminists desperate ot show that a woman can write something intellectually complicated. Unfortuately in this case the word "convoluted" is more appropriate. I hope it gets better soon...
Addendum: Okay, now I'm 500 pages into this book and I finally started to like it. I expecting a good story, but I think you need to read this hoping to learn something about the historical period and its people, with some truism thrown in about human nature. The story is secondary (totaly thrown together from what I could tell, anybody that loves Victorian literature really needs to give TV Soap Operas a fair shake). It also helps if you can conjure up the sound of Emma Thompson's voice as you are reading. It's not War and Peace or Pride and Prejudice for that matter, but it has its rewards.
Rating:
Summary: On the Modern Library Edition
Review: "Middlemarch" is, doubtlessly, a brilliant masterpiece. George Eliot shows what a profound and original mind. Her skills in narration and characterization are among the very best of English writers. However, the Modern Library Edition, despite the nice binding and paper quality, is plagued with little errors which ought to be easily resolved by one more round of careful proofreading. These little nuisances tend to get in the way of reading, I find, and I do hope that Modern Library will deliver a proof-read edition sometime in the near future.
Rating:
Summary: Wow. Wow. Wow. Did I mention Wow?
Review: Having been slightly bored by "Silas Marner," I was not expecting much gratification from this massive tome. But I had heard good things about "Middlemarch" from others, so I steeled myself and dug in. I was quite figuratively blown-away by the quality of writing.
It is not just that Eliot is an excellent satirist, but that she makes penetrating psychological insights and crafts very well-developed, imminently human characters, who are sympathetic despite their faults. She also exhibits a brilliant mastery of the English language, describing both internal and external scenes in the most beautiful of terms.
"Middlemarch" is not an easy read; there are multiple characters with complex relationships to one another, and the threads of their singular lives are eventually thoroughly tied up into one another. I found that keeping note cards on the family trees of the various characters was of assistance when reading. But once you have established who everyone is, the complexity of the novel is no longer a hindrance, and it may be read as lightly and quickly as any work of fiction.
The plot line is interesting enough, but it is the personalities of the characters that are truly gripping. I cannot recall a single novel that has stimulated my intellect as deeply, or drawn upon my emotions as expertly, or commanded my respect as fully as "Middlemarch." I cannot issue a higher recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: Too detached for my taste
Review: This classic Victorian novel was on my list of books to read, and I had heard good things about it.
This epic novel (880 pages, lots of characters) begins with the story of Dorothea Brooke, a kind-hearted young woman who gets stuck in an unfulfilling marriage. Eventually, she is able to find love. The rest of the story (and there are multiple subplots) is filled by the intricacies of the townspeople of Middlemarch. Here you will wade through stories of gambling debs, family scandal, and various other estate affairs.
If this sounds intriguing to you, then have at it. Eliot is wonderful at Victorian prose, and although she was often criticized for being "depressing," it's great stuff. If you thought "Emma" or "Pride and Prejudice" was a little slow, however, then it is likely you will not be impressed.
The main problem I can see with a book like this is that there is something in it for everybody to complain about. Victorian romance novel fans will complain that the book is not happy enough, and that Eliot doesn't talk enough about love. Epic novel fans will complain that there isn't enough going on and some things are only hinted at.
This book is notable in that Eliot was trying to write a much more serious novel than other women writers of the day, and in that she succeeded. Readers who are interested in women writers should read this book, and it is important in the history of English literature. I guess I wasn't able to see as much there as others could.
Rating: 
Summary: Drivel in bad need of a reality check
Review: I have been reading Dickens, Austen, Blackmore, Maugham, James and others and have enjoyed their works. To read more classics I ordered Middlemarch after seeing so many 5-star reviews. Although a majority of reviewers claimed to have sensed some profound depth in the book, the only thing I sensed was that it is a driveling tale. I forced myself to finish the book to make sure I wouldn't miss where the supposed depth was, but even with a whopping 800 + pages, I found it to be nonexistent.
First of all, Eliot is too literary for my taste. She goes off on philosophical tangents and ends up speaking to the clouds instead of to her readers--more a display, in my opinion, of self-gratification with fancy words than of fine storytelling. Many people revel on her splendid philosophical allusions written in what they describe as fine, stylized prose. I don't appreciate her style at all. Her long-winded passages describing characters' thoughts through a maze of literary, historical and mythological references hijacked the storyline instead of adding to it. The result was too much baggage that gets lost on the average reader like me. If you want a gripping story written in poignant but down-to-earth language, read 'Of Human Bondage' by Maugham.
Originally, Eliot had started two separate novels: one about Dorothea and the other about Lydgate. Then she heaped these two characters together with a plethora of others into one hodgepodge that ended up as the over-rated Middlemarch. The pasting together of bits from the two proposed novels is evident in Middlemarch, as the story comes out choppy, jumping from persons to places to episodes to where you wonder what business they have being bound between the covers of a single book. For example, the prologue, which talks of St. Theresa, is something she wrote for he Dorothea-based novel but kept it needlessly intact. We obviously relate Dorothea, who is portrayed as (and assumed to be at the bookfs beginning) the main character. After he first 100 pages or so Eliot attaches her Lydgate-based story and adds a myriad of other characters thereby shoving aside Dorothea. She ends up with such a cumbersome congregation that we are distracted from the solid storyline she was building around Dorothea. So I ask, what business does the St. Theresa part have to do with Lydgate, Rosamond, Bulstrode, etc. anyway?
Eliot's characters seem fake in many respects, as I could not relate to them as people who could ever exist in our real world. One example out of many is the whiny, boneless Fred Vincy, a spoiled, spoon-feed grown-man who never ended up at the school of hard knocks. Everybody coddled him and made excuses for him; and yes, he was a nice guy, but real people wouldn't have come out totally unscathed as Fred did.
The beginning of the novel held my interest, and I started to enjoy it when Eliot was describing the growing tension, despair and suffering--all the harsh realities of married life--that are building while Dorothea was on her honeymoon trip to Rome. Later, however, I became totally frustrated, as Eliot has Dorothea continually treat her dysfunctional marriage as if it were a lovely tea party. Dorothea's passivity, civility and subservience in her marriage started off as frustrating to me, but that was the character that Eliot created so I accepted it at first. After a while, though, the same monotonous tone of continuous passivity and subservience started to grate on my nerves until it finally transcended into the absurd: nobody would act like that in real life.
Eliot never included any heated disputes between Dorothea and her husband. We were spoon-fed a few milquetoast disagreements between them: you know, everything was all so very prim and proper but of course, but oh so unnatural too. And also, Dorothea and her husband's atypical and stoic inter-actions and dialogue as a couple were more becoming of lifeless stick figures (think of Gumby dolls) in a silent-movie melodrama. Eliot wrote paragraphs infinitum of philosophical mishmash in lieu of writing normal and human drama depicting real behavior, real conversations, and real reactions between the couple. In other words, she leaves out all the good stuff that makes an intense novel. Lacking this, Eliot's story is neither credible nor a page-turner, differing completely from Henry Jamesf "Portrait of a Lady" that has a similar theme but which is so brilliantly handled it creates a much more realistic and engrossing story.
In the end, I just don't get it in terms of all the fuss about this book. What I do get is that Middlemarch by no means merits 'classic' status in my opinion. Adding further superlative praises about Eliot's writing sounds to me like getting onboard the bandwagon of literary snobbery, and although I am in the minority here, I will pass on getting onboard Eliot's bandwagon. I instead will seek much more enjoyable reading elsewhere; it does abound if you read the right authors whom I have previously mentioned.
Rating:
Summary: I suposse a classic
Review: I first read this book as an undergraduate -- and I still pick it up now and again for inspiration. This is Eliot's best novel -- you may go on to read Daniel Deronda, Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss, but this is the one to start with. It has it all: the love story, the quest for fulfillment, an Italy honeymoon, allusions to John Milton, and financial struggles. Tolstoy, Trollope and Dickens also capture the rich panoramic vision of humanity that Eliot shows -- but her view is so much warmer, so much more optimistic and expresses a strong undercurrent of benevolence. After you read Middlemarch, you will feel renewed and optimistic about the possibility in the world. If you are at all interested in realism or nineteenth century life, you will really enjoy Eliot's portrayals of both Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate. Dorothea is the quintessential Eliot heroine who seeks to do good and be perfect in an imperfect world. She marries a much older man because he is a scholar -- however, he doesn't understand her spirit or her youthfulness. Tertius Lydgate is the idealistic doctor whose major character flaw is that he falls in love with women who don't see the value of the medical profession. Eliot traces the development of both Dorothea and Lydgate, as well as other characters in the community: Mary Garth and Fred Vincy are just one example. If you are up for a challenge of a mixture of a nineteenth century novel, a mastery of realism, and some unexpected philosophy, you will gain something from reading this work. It may be enjoyed on many levels, but I think the most important one is that it shows portraits of the people who still inhabit our world --- the unsung heroes and the quietly talented.
Rating:
Summary: Great 19th C. Book about Being Human
Review: I first read this book in a college course about self-deception as a theme in literature. This was by far my favorite of the things we read (we read such other things as Vanity Fair, The Ring and the Book). This is really a long book about ordinary circumstances in a 19th century rural area in England. So why is a book such as this one considered such a classic even though not many particularly grand events happen? The book is the study of the ordinary in many ways. You end up seeing how different people live and deal with different situations and what kinds of people they are. At the same time that the reader comes to judgments about the people in the book, George Eliot manages to portray most of her characters sympathetically. Even the worst people in the book are rounded out in some ways and Eliot tries to imbue a sense of humanity. It portrays an "adult" view of the world instead of the simplistic view of the child. In fact, Dorothea makes a journey during the book from a child with a romanticized view to an adult with a more rich understanding through life experience and wisdom. If you're looking for a book about exciting events, with high drama, with a fast pace, don't bother picking this book up since you'll probably dislike it. This is a book written by a woman and expressing some criticisms of a woman's place in the world of her time. It is also a book that explores a more ordinary setting and viewpoint than perhaps most male authors of the time would write in such depth about. She brings a different experience than most male or female authors of the 19th century. Male authors focused on grander events (their characters often fighting to get somewhere in life) while many female authors showed a romanticized view of life and love. Look at the romances of Jane Austin in which a good marriage seems to be the ultimate goal, or the stormy loves of Emily Bronte in which some strange control/love dynamic becomes magnified to almost heroic proportions. The author is showing something unique, more restrainted, less extreme, more "middle" or ordinary. She manages to pull off a more balanced or "middle" view, also. I noticed some other readers mentioned that it was slow, that they thought events were predictable, or other similar criticisms. These criticisms are valid as far as they go--but they miss the point since these elements aren't really the center of this book. In fact, Middlemarch is really about a somewhat mundane existance that is inhabited by many people in the real world. We aren't immune to a mundane existance today: work; TV; having enough money to get by; domestic squabbles; eating; relating to other people; perhaps dreaming of something grand but not accomplishing it. There are many events of a mostly ordinary nature that gradually lead one way or another in the lives of people (both ourselves and others around us). Really this book is about gradual changes, about good acts and bad acts. It's about coming to some state of acceptance and a kind of enlightenment in life. It's about making the unexceptional life one of meaning even when circumstances prevent many large or great things. It's about a hard-to-define quality called "goodness" even absent huge acts or events. In any case, give this book a read if you like 19th century English literature since it's one of the greats of the period. It's also one of my favorites since I feel as though the author is treating the reader as an adult, without pulling punches, while explaining something about the life that most actual people experience.
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