Rating: Summary: Booooooooring Review: I'm a senior in high school, and Mill on the Floss was the most boring book I've ever read. Every guy in my English class despised it, and only a few girls liked it. It takes over one hundred pages for Eliot to get started, and she lacks direction throughout the book. Even an experienced reader is left asking, "What's your point?" It seems as though she tries to say too much (or really never knew what she wanted to say), and it all gets jumbled and garbled into essentially nothing--and she does it all in only 600 pages. If you have to read it for school...I'm sorry. If you're thinking about reading it for pleasure, there are plenty of better books to read.
Rating: Summary: This is not your average family Review: If you thought your family feuds were bad, try this one! A brother who forbids his sister to wed whomever she choses, how close can siblings get? Ultimately, this destroys their relationship. But in the end they are brought together into each other arms to love and care for each other, for eternity.
Rating: Summary: MAGNIFICENT Review: In THE MILL ON THE FLOSS George Eliot provides an insightful and intelligent story depicting rural Victorian society. Set in the parish of St. Ogg's, Maggie and Tom Tulliver endure childhood and young adulthood while experiencing the harsh realities of poverty, devotion, love, and societal reputation. I emphasized greatly with Maggie as I have experienced some of her own lived experiences. I truly loved every chapter of this book and didn't want it to end. It is indeed very rare that I have this type of reaction to a book. Although this book was published during the Victorian era, it's amazing how Eliot's prose flows virtually unobstructed. The reader is given a rare glimpse into rural life during the 19th century and is treated to how strictly structured society was then. I am now a fan of Eliot and look forward to reading her other novels.Bottom line: THE MILL ON THE FLOSS is an excellent novel. Enjoy!
Rating: Summary: The Mystery of George Eliot Review: Is George Eliot the world's greatest novelist? There's certainly an argument to be made, based on her classics Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, which feature characters as complex and vividly, bafflingly alive as those of Shakespeare. Yet today she seems curiously unread and under-appreciated, certainly in comparison to her contemporary, Charles Dickens. This has long mystified me, but perhaps I've found the solution in Mill on the Floss. Seemingly the best known of her books, Mill on the Floss is certainly the one most frequently taught in high schools and colleges. And it's probably enough to guarantee that most students forced through it or its Cliff Notes won't bother with her again. Not that it's a bad book. If you like Eliot, you'll find plenty of her riveting, obsessive characterization and dramatic psychology here. But along with these come a fractured, frustrating structure, a dearth of narrative drive, and endless passages of phonetic, "naturalistic" rural accents. Not to mention an ending so out of left field it seems to belong to an entirely different story. Unlike Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, or even early but more successful novels like Adam Bede, Mill on the Floss is work, and its rewards are more modest. Mill on the Floss seems to rate the academic attention because of its autobiographical elements, perhaps for its dazzling heroine, rather than its overall quality. So don't let an underwhelmed response to this fascinating if flawed book keep you from the rest of her amazing work -- she might be the best novelist out there.
Rating: Summary: A great novel which sadly falls at the last hurdle. Review: It begins with the satire and light-heartedness of a Dickens novel, which is gradually consumed by the emotional intensity and confusion characteristic of Austen, but sadly it never reaches the tragic depths of ' Anna Karenina', which in my opinion it so despretly wants. Because of this, it fails to find it's way and gets hoplessly lost in the third section, with unnecessary plot twists. Nonetheless, Elliot paints a real and beautiful scene of rural life wich is unsurpassable, but is let down by a dodgy climax, a shame for us and shameful for her.
Rating: Summary: Suspense and Shines Review: Known to all as George Eliot's greatest creation, it's no wonder when you start reading from page one to the last. Through and through the power and spirit of the story is astounding, and a the end just shocks and volts one. While many authors go and create a happy ending just to satisfy readers and keep them as THEIR readers, Eliot did something unexpected, and aparently few people know how to appreciate such a different and original outcome. Life isn't always full of happy endings, but the eternal binding of brother and sister is true and touching.
Rating: Summary: Wonderful, grim novel Review: The Mill on the Floss has one of the most appealing young girl characterss of all 19th c. literature--Maggie Tolliver. The relationship between her and her brother is at once beautiful, horrible, and probably indicative of much that was true for boys and girls in 19th century England. Whenever I read the book (and I've read it a few times), I am again in love with Maggie, delighted with the people around her, and saddened by the heavy events that bring her down. George Eliot doesn't pull punches--when you've read one of her books, you know you've been somewhere else, experienced something powerful
Rating: Summary: The Tragedy of a Sister & Brother Review: THE MILL ON THE FLOSS is an incredibly gruelling read, especially for those who are highly empathic or emotionally vulnerable to human suffering, even if the humans in this case are entirely fictional. Maggie Tulliver is seemingly doomed from birth, being a passionate and impulsive woman in a constricted, decidedly malevolent society that utterly forbids such traits in females. My personal reading of the novel was made all the worse due to the character of Tom Tulliver. To me, Tom is the personification of all the very worst aspects of humanity, and is all the more loathsome because of it. He is highly gifted at homing in on and pointing out the weaknesses of others, but stubbornly refuses to acknowledge his own serious flaws. The scene with Maggie confronting her brother in the first chapter of the seventh book is especially devastating. Tom speaks down to Maggie from an imaginary pedestal of his own making, then proceeds to abandon her in her darkest hour. It is a callous act of arrogance and wrongful moral judgement that far exceeds any sin Maggie might have perpetuated in her entire lifetime.
Tom has strengths of his own - he is strong in will and dedication, and almost single-handedly rescues his family from financial ruin. However, these strengths also underline his weaknesses. Tom indeed has a firm sense of right and wrong - in everyone else. When it comes to his own person, Tom fancies himself (however unintentionally) among the Gods. This is perhaps what makes him the single most unsympathetic character I've ever encountered in literature. In many ways, Tom is little more than an educated bully.
Many readers may believe that Tom is redeemed in the final pages of the novel along with Maggie, but I'm forced to disagree. Tom's overbearing pride, which has been one of the mainstays of the novel, has finally broken down only in the face of an act by God Himself. It took something entirely elemental to force a single scrap of humility on Tom's personality. Tom hasn't learned his most valuable lesson, even moments before his death. At least, that's what I'm inclined to believe.
Rating: Summary: Ok, but long! Review: The story I find quite ok and kind of exiting at times...but George Eliot could have written this book in 200 pages, not 500 (the paperback edition). At times she really creats a great atmosphere with her long explainations and detail descriptions, for an example is her description of the town St. Ogg. But generally her descriptions are way to long and that gave me the feeling that she was trying to hard to create some atmosphere. She simply over did it! If you have enough time and litle pacience I can recomend this read. I will probably hesitate alitle before I read George Eliot again! Arni
Rating: Summary: Dull... Review: The story of a woman that does not know what she wants. Boring, decidedly too long and with a detestable, foolish heroine. Why did Eliot wish to torture her readers?
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