I’m hard pressed to find anything I disliked about this. There is always the danger of a reader not finding the same things the author found to be interesting as compelling, but that’s not me, this time. This is a fascinating encapsulation of an era, so for historical fiction, I doubt I will ever find something as good. But it’s also thematically complex and has a very intricate plot across many characters. And it is not prescriptive, despite the author inserting herself into the narrative (in a far more successful and engaging way than, say, War & Peace, I might add).

Across the characters what becomes clear is that there is no one correct negotiation to happiness or “right” choice. Especially by popular opinion. The rumour mill of Middlemarch is as savage as Twitter, perhaps even more so, since everyone actually cares what society thinks of them. As time goes by, the fortunes fall and rise with each, as they develop and forge themselves into who they will remain—more-or-less—for the rest of their lives. It touches on all manner of their lives and it was always engrossing to me. Elliot was absolutely an erudite study of people. The rendering at every level of the book is nothing short of masterful.

As I said, really the only danger is if a reader isn’t interested in this kind of book, or the style of writing, which is descriptive, high in interiority, and verbose, to say the least. Her command of language as an art is well beyond most. I personally enjoy looking up words, especially esoteric antiquated ones. It doesn’t happen all the time, but enough for it to be fun, and not an obvious deployment of a thesaurus, as sometimes these things go. Anyway: Certainly this easily makes it into my all-time-favourites shelf.