100 Books to Read POster - No. 8

Go on, go on, guess!

Gold star if you said The Mill on the Floss.

I have a very ambivalent relationship with this book. For years there was a copy on my mother's  bookshelves, and for some reason as I grew up, although I never read it, I assumed I knew what it was about. Quite where I got this impression I don't know, because certainly it was a rare day when my mother and I discussed a book, and it  never happened before I was a grown up. I eventually had to read it when I did my MA and discovered, surprise, surprise, apart from the ending, I had absolutely no idea what it was about at all! I do remember though, that I really enjoyed it; reading it, thinking about it, writing the module essay on it.

So I was pleased to see it on the 100 books poster and I was looking forward to re-reading it. I gave most of my MA texts away long ago, and didn't really want to buy it again, so was delighted to find it out on the library shelves.  (I am convinced that when they see me coming certain members of the library staff hurry away from the counter into their little office space and cower behind the door lest I approach them with  a hopeful smile and yet another book request which necessitates a visit to the stacks.)

Sadly re-reading it was not the easy joy I had anticipated and I had to renew the loan  three times to get through it. The story is still interesting, the characters are still compelling, but oh! how the woman does go on. And on. And on. It was also very clear to me on this reading, although not previously, how immature Eliot's style still was at the point she wrote this book.  Her arch comments to the reader intrude in a tale that would be better without them; there is no need for her to underline her points in this way, especially when the point she is underlining she has probably covered two or three times already. Someone should have taught her that Less is More before she wrote the opening lines. There is the occasional glimpse of a leavening humour, but it is very occasional; she was a solemn, sombre, driven woman and although I  perfectly appreciate the personal and social reasons for her being like that it does rather blight her work at times. 

Verdict on The Mill on the Floss - Regrettably - A Miss (this time around)