I've had a copy of George Eliot's Silas Marner on my TBR shelf for several years now. Had I known what a treasure I was allowing to sit there lonely for so much time, I would have read it long ago! The story of Silas and Eppie is a sweet one and I know I'll enjoy this short novel again and again in years to come.

Book Description: "Although the shortest of George Eliot's novels, Silas Marner is one of her most admired and loved works. It tells the sad story of the unjustly exiled Silas Marner---a handloom linen weaver of Raveloe in the agricultural heartland of England---and how he is restored to life by the unlikely means of the orphan child Eppie. Silas Marner is a tender and moving tale of sin and repentance set in a vanished rural world and holds the reader's attention until the last page as Eppie's bonds of affection for Silas are put to the test."

There are so many great themes in this little 160 page book. Unforgiveness and redemption, innocence and the importance of honesty. I think my favorite lesson in Silas Marner is one that all of the characters learn in one way or another: just because things don't end up the way you wish they would, doesn't mean you can't still have a happy ending. Sometimes the the way things become "resolved" is by us accepting the fact that they're not able to be resolved. Accepting that and moving forward in joy is how we can truly be free from the things in our past that would want to bind us and hold us back. I have a feeling I'll take away a fresh meaning every time I read this delightful tale of Silas Marner and the people of Raveloe.

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A quaint little fairy tale of a novella. Not particularly exciting but a nifty little moralistic tale about provincial early 19th century England. At least I can now claim that I’ve read a George Eliot novel. As for the two included short stories, I couldn't make it past the 10th page of either one. For aficionados only, I suppose. How could anyone subject high school students to this as required reading? ( )

An unusually satisfying story of redemption in the life of a miser whose greatest delight is in counting his gold each night after a day at his weaving loom. A little two-year-old girl whose mother lies dead in a ditch wanders into his hut in a snowstorm and radically alters his values and lifestyle. His door was open to her and his life was greatly enlarged and blessed. The little girl's father, who has never acknowledged her, remains childless and lives in deep regret and unhappiness. The author gives a very authentic description of life in a country village in the early years of the 19th century, not only in word pictures, but in the speech and mannerisms of the people. A story of fierce devotion between two very needy people who in finding each other, transform an ugliness into something of great beauty. ( )

A really lovely book.

Marner is a stranger in a town. He is an outcast who is accepted only because he is tremendously skilled as a weaver.

He doesn't go to church, since he was betrayed in his home country by his best friend and abandoned by his fiancee. So Marner decides he will no longer engage with people or believe in God. He will find joy in the money he makes, all gold coins.

But then someone steals the coins, and Marner discovers an abandoned blond baby girl in his house.

Eliot wrote an interesting piece on spirituality, religious and human morality. It is a surprisingly modern piece, that echoes what one guesses is the authors assessment of her own religous ambiguity. ( )