Last Spring when everything closed down and we were all staying home I jumped on the Middlemarch bandwagon and started reading along with thousands of other people. I made good progress through April and May, but when my library reopened in mid-May I didn’t have as much time to read and stopped for a bit. Then we closed again in July and I was able to read big chunks of this Victorian classic while sitting at the curbside pickup desk waiting for patrons to pick up their holds. But as summer progressed I lost my momentum, though I only had 200 pages to go. I so much wanted to finish before the year ended but it didn’t happen. So, last weekend when I was feeling a bit under the weather I decided to complete the last 200 pages and finally check Middlemarch off my 15 year long “want to read” list.
And did I like it? Yes, very much! Like many readers, I felt an instant kinship with Dorothea Brooke and was most interested in her storyline. Yet, I did find the story of Lydgate and Rosamond to be such a fascinating insight into an incompatible and unsuccessful marriage. And, of course, I wanted to find out if Fred Vincy and Mary Garth would end up together. I love how all of their paths cross as they are engaged in their own pursuits – as they would in a real town.
I don’t have much to say beyond how much I enjoyed it because I think it is a book that is so full of wisdom and layers of meaning that I would need a re-read to absorb it all. But I will not be re-reading it soon! I am just so very happy to have crossed it off my list, though that is an unsatisfactory way of describing how I felt when I turned the last page. It is a simply wonderful book and one that will stay with me throughout my life.
Have you read Middlemarch? Is there another book you were so happy to have finally read?
A Certain Fondness 