Title: Middlemarch. A Study of Provincial Life
Author: George Eliot
Written: 1872
Pages: 912
Structure: Prelude, 86 Chapters, Finale, in eight “Books”.
Middlemarch surprised me. It’s brilliantly clever: intimate, and vast at the same time. On the surface it is about life in a small provincial town in the English Midlands around 1830, but under the surface it explores the hopes, motivations and frustrations of people just like us. We can understand what drives each of the characters, even though we may disagree with them. The result feels more than a story, it is almost a detailed philosophy our own minds.