Rating: 
Summary: Eliots best book
Review: I give the book Silas Marner a mixed review because although it is a good book with a lot of details, it is hard for younger people to understand. I am a freshman in high school and I found it difficult to read. Geoge Eliot has written a fable about Silas Marner. After his friend blackmails him, Silas moves to Raveloe after losing his faith in the Lord and starts a new life. He gets rich from weaving and becomes obsessed with his gold. His life starts to crumble after something happens and then it all comes back when a little girl with golden hair comes to his cottage.Silas Marner is not the best book because the narrator tried too pack to much information in to this book for how short it is. It is too hard for younger people to read because of the hard words like metamorphosis and the time period it is written in which was the Victorian age. Another bad thing about it is there are too many coincidences in it that makes it seem like a fairy tale; for example, like when Silas has his fits at the most convenient time in the plot. Some good things about the novel are that there are some good morals in it for people to learn. Eliot helps up realize the importance of love, trust and religion as Silas loses and gains these things back again. Some other morals that I learned from reading this book are not to keep lies from the people that you love and to always think about your decisions. All an all, Silas Marner is a good book. I think that George Eliot did a good job on this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The Andrew Sachs audiotape is superb
Review: I'm sure there are other good versions of Silas Marner available on CD or audiotape, but I must express my admiration for the reading by Andrew Sachs in an excellent unabrdiged edition of this Victorian classic. I was perhaps fortunate that I was not forced to read this book in high school when I might have found it a chore, so I approached the story with an open mind. Sachs manages beautifully to convey the inner life of Eliot's characters through his acting talent and his choices of slightly differing voices for each individual. A great reading of a great novel.
Rating:
Summary: Pure gold
Review: If you have a heart, the story of Silas Marner will warm it. You are better coming to it fresh, without knowing anything of the simple yet solid plot, so I will say nothing of it. I will just urge you to read this wonderful book. Eliot writes beautifully and from page one, you realize you are in the hands of a true artist. This is a very human, very English story of simple people living through those very basic emotions that make the world turn and give the universe meaning.
Rating:
Summary: A classic story of the redemptive power of love
Review: Like so many other American high- schoolers I with great difficulty went through this work. Years later I subjected one of my children to the same ordeal when she needed to write a book- report. And this because I found then and now, this moral tale of redemptive love to be moving and instructional. For young people and I expect for most readers today the complexity of Eliot's language is an obstacle to be overcome. She writes the kind of sentences the masters of style have been teaching Americans not to write for years. But she writes with great intelligence and intuition, great moral feeling. The story of the weaver unjustly accused of a robbery, who retreats into his own private world and who is later redeemed by his meeting and taking care of an orphan child is one which cannot help but touch the heart. And as Hawthorne said when the heart is touched we begin to be .And this work comes alive with the old codger's care for and love of the orphan child. Like Scrooge the other great scowling isolato of nineteenth century Literature he exemplifies and proves the greatest moral lesson of all, that in loving and caring for other human beings we become human ourselves.
Who can make it through the difficult language will find not only a very detailed and convincing description of English village life in the early nineteenth century but also a warm tale of the human heart healing itself through love.
Rating: 
Summary: I hate this book
Review: Long ago George Eliot breathed some life into these characters and their world of Raveloe, and if you look in on that place and time through the words on these pages, you'll find that things are still very vibrant there today. "Silas Marner" lives on because of the outstanding prose style and moral connundrums Eliot lays down as the foundation of her story. Her descriptions of people and places are so beautiful, her command of language so complete, and her style so refreshing, that it makes the world these people inhabit seem more alive and real than the worlds other authors attempt to spin. Her dialogue occasionly lets slip a touch of upper class pride, but overall her characters are expertly drawn, well filled out, and entertaining. The moral underpinnings of the story make it seem like a fable almost, but Eliot fortunately leaves final judgement of her characters up to the reader. Seeing Silas vindicated after so much going wrong for him made this worth the read for me. Despite some of the harsh realities of the class differences depicted, it is pleasant to watch the goings on in a small English town and to see Silas Marner at last catch some breaks and come into his own as a person. Even if it's a little unrealistic, heck, it's a novel so that's part of the fun. The choices we make for ourselves only determine part of our fate, Eliot seems to say with this story. Other things are not up to us, and those happen to us independent of any choices we make. I enjoyed pondering my own fate that way, through the lens of the little world of Raveloe. For such a short book, "Silas Marner" packs a lot of power in both language and meaning. This was my introduction to the work of George Eliot, and now I look forward to reading some of her other works.
Rating:
Summary: DO NOT READ THIS BOOK!
Review: Ok, I cant take it when people are like "ahh, its beautifuly written, and..." spare me! I love books like Timeline, or The Great Gatsby. NOT Silas Marner! This book is soooo RIDICULOUSLY slow, it baffles me. I just barley could read it during my senior year. I struggled so hard to get it done! If you feel the need to read this for fun, do not do it! I am forwarning you. It is by far the worst, most boring book ever written.
Rating:
Summary: Classic Literature
Review: Reviews of this novel, seem to fall into three categories: those written by people who like to read great literature; those written by people who would prefer to read brain candy; and those written students forced to read the novel as a class assignment and,in some cases, would prefer not to read anything (if the third category is discarded, the average rating is much higher). One of the most remarkable things about this novel is the fact it was written by a woman, using a male pen name, in 19th century England when women were generally oppressed, i.e., they were not encouraged to have careers or to do anything outside the home. The story is well known. A man who blacks out during seizures, not remembering what happened, is falsely accused of theft of money from his church. He is shunned by his former friends and becomes a recluse. When he is later robbed of his savings, and an abandoned child appears on his doorstep in place of the gold, his life is changed as he takes responsibility for the child. This is classic literature from that time period, and is most certainly easier to read than many other novels from the same period (students should consider themselves fortunate that they were not assigned to read one of Thomas Hardy's novels). I first became acquainted with the novel when it was assigned reading in a high school English class. That was over 50 years ago, and the story is one that has stuck in my mind.
Rating: 
Summary: Silas Marner, from a kids point of view.
Review: Silas Marner is a very interesting book. It is filled with excitement and suspense. I liked the book very much, but as a freshman in high school, it was very hard for me to read. George Eliot uses a lot of dialect along with some Old English words in her lovable tale. Eliot tells the story of a lonely weaver. After getting betrayed by friends in his old town of Lantern Yard, Silas moves to the town of Raveloe searching for a new life. His delusions keep him from getting accepted into the Raveloe community. After losing his faith in God and having his money stolen he gets a very special gift from someone he doesn't know, a little baby girl with golden hair. After that things work out for Silas and Eppie. George Eliot tells her classic novel in great detail with a lot of adjectives and metaphors. She has made a great novel that while a challenge is good for everybody. Silas Marner is really easy to comprehend because it is so realistic. I live in a small town and it reminds me of Raveloe. Sometimes I imagine that I am in Silas Marner's place and all my friends are the villagers. I think about what I would do if I was in Marner's place. Eliot also created a great plot for this book. This classic is great because it teaches people about life. It teaches people not to be selfish and to be kind to people no matter how good you think you are. Eliot has made a great book that would be great to read as a family.
Rating:
Summary: A truly wonderful little story!
Review: Silas Marner is a wonderful story about life and love. It begins with our hero, Silas Marner, a lonely, luckless old man, being robbed of his life savings. But then a mysterious appearance of a homeless, golden-haired little girl opens up an unexpected new chapter in his life. Silas Marner was a weaver who through loneliness and through life's occurrences becomes bitter and miserly. The theft of his life savings causes him to rethink everything about his life. Ms. Eliot also introduces Godfrey Cass to her cast of characters. Godfrey is a foil to Silas. He is the real father of Eppie, the young girl that Silas adopts. We watch as Silas' lot and outlook on life improve, Godfrey's life dissolves into disappointment, fear and guilt. The book is not "preachy", but a reader cannot help but be improved by reading and learning the moral lessons that it delivers.
Rating:
Summary: Classic Tale of Redemption
Review: This is an odd little book, but it's a good one. It's odd because the famous story of the old miser who is redeemed by taking in an angelic little girl to raise doesn't really even begin until half-way through the novel. This was definitely a surprise to me, but it wasn't a bad one. It ends up that there is a lot more to this novel than I thought there would be. In that first half of the novel, George Eliot brilliantly elucidates the fallen nature of both Silas Marner and the community. They're are revealed to be such selfish and sinful people. They are all in the throws of despair, lamenting their plight as humans and questioning a God who placed them in their lives. Eliot is really wonderful at capturing the need of each individual for redemption and also that need in the community as a whole. The individuals are criticized as is the unfair societal structure. Into this fallen world comes the angelic Eppie, and that's when the story really picks up. Eppie is the catalyst of grace offering redemption to Silas and the rest of the community. Silas Marner is really an extraordinary little novel. It's a thoroughly enjoyable book (especially after you get through the first half) with a lot of valid criticism and some hope. It's a really beautiful little classic.
| 
