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: An English classic
Review: A real pleasure to recently discover this classic for the first time, "Middlemarch" is a fine example of the English style of writing from that period, a long book of almost 900 pages, with a large cast of characters and several main plot lines, novels like this are a reminder of the richness of the English language. This is a soap opera set in the fictional town of Middlemarch with descriptions of every walk of life, George Eliot's perceptions of human nature make this a timeless piece of fiction, though there is no doubt that she describes a way of life gone forever. A main theme in this novel would seem to be possessing Utopian visions and the difficulty of putting them into practice in reality. One of the main characters is Dorothea, a young woman with great social ideals, she "thinks too much for a woman" and is under constant pressure from well-meaning realtives who want her to marry safely and give up her goals of saving the world. Dr. Lydgate is someone else we come to know quite well, another individual who has lofty ideas but trouble coping with the real world because he tries to ignore it. Mr. Brooke and Bulstrode also have certain visions of themselves not shared by an informed public. Some reviewers seem to feel this book is too long, that the story could have been told in half the words, but I would not change one bit of this, the beautiful use of words helps me to escape into the world of Middlemarch when life was slower moving and people had more time for reflection.
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: A Very Enjoyable Novel
Review: I bought the Penguin Classics edition (1994 version) because of the copious notes explaining language and references likely unfamiliar to reader's of today. These notes made reading Middlemarch a little more cumbersome, since they are at the end, but the added understanding made it worth the effort. Those interested in researching George Eliot's life and her other works should consider finding a copy of the Oxford Reader's Companion to George Eliot, John Rignall ed., Oxford University Press. Middlemarch, recommended by a friend who knew that I enjoyed reading 18th and 19th century literature, was a difficult book to put down. I had just finished Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and prior to that all of Jane Austen's work. In comparison, Middlemarch seems to hold a middle ground between Bronte and Austin in terms of style. Where Jane Austen's text tends to be light and simple, Bronte's a bit heavy and complex, Eliot's Middlemarch is also complex but it flows like Austen's best works. Middlemarch isn't perfect - Eliot actually revised the ending because it contradicted earlier assertions. But it is definitely a great read and worthy of being on everyone's bookshelf. Whether or not her depiction of early 19th century England is accurate I don't know. What I do know is that her characters are endearing in spite, or perhaps because, of all their faults, misunderstandings, and sometimes downright childish behavior. Eliot try's not to judge the actions of her characters by occasionally halting the story line and explaining them in what seems to be a neutral "scientific" manner; and I often found those explanations insightful and worth remembering (if only my memory would cooperate). Middlemarch, for me, stands with Jane Austin's work as one of the best novels I have read in a very long time.
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.
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: 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...
Rating:
Summary: Warm, fuzzy, too long. Think Tolstoy after a lobotomy.
Review: Middlemarch is treated as a classic: it shouldn't be. While it has some amusing stock characters and portrays some of the great disappointments of life, its moralizing is overt and its plot is boring. The characterization is thorough and and frequently good. But the villians are all too villainous and the good guys all too good. One can see the ending a mile off, and one begins to shift in one's seat after only 200 pages. However, one hopes that the end would have some twist that would dispell the reader's suspicions of a transparent march to an inexorable ending. Eliot disappoints with her anticlimactic and smarmy ending.
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.
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