Kathy O'Shaughnessy

I am in love with George Eliot. I had hoped in this time of COVID anxiety that I could learn more about her more easily in a novel than in a biography. In Love with George Eliot is not the book in which that will happen.

Marian Evans was one of the consummate masters of English prose. I'm sad that her story is being told by a person who has no feeling for the language and whose prose is barely competent at best. This reads like a first draft. The first paragraph illustrates my point.

The train had shuddered to a halt. Clatter of doors opening and shutting, noise echoing in the huge vault of Euston station, a smell of oil-flavoured steam and soot. A last door opens, and a woman neither young nor old, slightly round-shouldered, descends to the platform. She looks round, possibly she is short-sighted: a tall man walks towards her. Everything about his stride and the way he greets her suggests a contrasting certainty and vigour.

I apologize to ER for taking a book from somebody who could read that paragraph without reaching for a red pencil. I just can't.… (más)

"....in her ostracized life... so aware of being held in dispute - writing had offered the freedom to speak, which felt beautiful... she, the anonymous Marian Evans, spoke to the reader. In real life she spoke to so few people"...

...Well, that was at first of course, when she was judged by her peers for living with a man without being married. Because when she became famous for her writing (under the name of George Eliot), while still living with George Lewes in illegitimate relationship, there were those regular, wonderful Sundays at their house where "life was lived on no ordinary level", where one could encounter Dickens, Thackerey, Henry James and other distinguished minds from all spectrum of learned fields, where "they were nurturing their minds as other people watered their gardens"....

This is a worthy piece of historical fiction, in which the author justifiably draws on the numerous biographies of George Eliot (Marian Evans), as well as the writer's diaries. The title is most appropriate, as the author concentrates on Marion Evans's extraordinary relationship with George Lewes - the two of them undeniably a rare case of two kindred souls that cannot fail to warm anybody's heart by their example; no amount of scandal incited by the society that looked down on their unconventional union could stop them from being together. It's really hard to imagine a more rewarding relationship...

There is also a reference to pure adoration Evans invoked in at least one young woman, Edith Simcox, and strong feelings of love from a couple of other women, her friends. And - last but not least - her relationship with John (Johnny) Cross, 20 years her junior, who had been a great friend for years and whom, after George Lewes's death, she finally married in full legitimacy (legitimacy which was denied to her in her life with George).

What comes through for me from the beginning are two things: Marian's insecurity ("she was so sensitive to put-downs", always re-thinking what she said in a conversation, etc.) - even in the face of her genius as a writer; and, second, George Lewes being her utmost champion throughout their life together, her "most percipient critic" and an extraordinary soul mate, who was tuned to her every thought and feeling, and who "had the surest instinct".

In this book, there is another line that swerves in between chapters on Marian's life: it's a subplot describing a modern day lady professor writing a book about George Eliot based on the latter's diary. It does not distract from the main plot but gives it an interesting look from the side.

I have read only two novels by George Eliot - "Adam Bede" and "Middlemarch", the latter being my favorite of the two... This novel about her life intrigued me, so I will be definitely reading more, and with different eyes, too...… (más)