Book #12: Middlemarch

I just finished Middlemarch, and I am so overwhelmed that I will abandon my usual way of reviewing books, with the silly questions that lead me to put down silly answers. As soon as I finished the last page, I though immediately of what a kinda old man told me in Portland, when he saw me reading it on the train. "It's an exhausting book," he said, "because it takes something out of you." And it really did. Though you can't say that the book has an unhappy ending, it's all about disappointment…how marriage is disappointing, because people settle for less than they want or need. How much a person can disappoint his or her family, and the sacrifices that a family will make -- or choose not to make -- to put up with that. How one's occupation is disappointing, because even if you set out with the grandest ambitions and plans they'll likely be squashed under your failures. How easily we'll compromise. How even the best-lived life disappears in the shadows of others.

One thing I noted about this book was how many people wanted to talk to me about it when I was reading it, and I guess that's because with so many characters, a person sees something of him or herself in at least one of them, if not several. For those of you that don't know, it's about a small countryside town full of people whose lives intertwine and wrap around each other in the way that small town lives do. There's political and industrial change in the air, though, and the people are trying to deal with that while trying to make their place in the world. Unfortunately, these people often make the choices that most directly block their happiness, and then we have to watch them squirm. And it's a universal book because we have probably squirmed in some sort of similar situation. But complicating their lives was the fact that divorce was not an option then as it was now. What a modern luxury to read about some of these people's lives and just think that they should get divorced.

At first, I wondered what all the fuss was about in terms of that book, but I think I just got off to a bad start with it. You should never, ever take Middlemarch with you on a plane or a train if you haven't started it, I guess because that would be just too modern for this book. It takes awhile to get into and to remember who everyone is. But there was a certain point where all of a sudden, whoosh! I had to know what was going to happen to everyone. Sometimes I liked what happened, sometimes I didn't. Often this novel made my stomach hurt because of what was happening, though I will admit there were times when I wished what was happening could have been condensed ever so slightly. It's a long book.

When I was really struggling with this book, I would look at the back, where there's this quote: "A book one can read, and reread, with no fear of exhausting its riches." The quote is by Margaret Drabble, who has written her fair share of books if Wikipedia to be believed. But anyway, I would look at what Margaret Drabble had said and think that Margaret Drabble was crazy. Now, though, I see why you'd want to reread it. I'm very glad I read it at this age, before I made too many of my own mistakes, for I can only imagine it would be much more heartbreaking to read it years from now, having made some of those same mistakes.

Anyways, I'm sure there's more to say, but that's enough for now. Suffice it to say that it's a wonderful book, a good book to end the year on.