My Life in Middlemarch - Mead, RebeccaSummary: A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth--Middlemarch-- and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* When Mead first read George Eliot's Middlemarch, a "masterwork of sympathetic philosophy," as a young woman in an English seaside town, it became her polestar. A New Yorker staff writer and author of One Perfect Day (2007), Mead now explains why in this heady blend of memoir, biography, and literary criticism. She performs an exhilarating, often surprising close reading of the novel, which Eliot began writing at age 51 in 1870. And she takes a fresh look at Eliot's daringly unconventional life, visiting the writer's homes and casting light not only on the author's off-the-charts intellect but also her valor in forthrightly addressing complex moral issues, cutting sense of humor, "large, perceptive generosity," and the deep love she shared with critic and writer George Henry Lewes and his sons. Mead injects just enough of her own life story to take measure of the profound resonance of Eliot's progressive, humanistic viewpoint, recognition of the heroism of ordinary lives, and crucial central theme, "a young woman's desire for a substantial, rewarding, meaningful life." Mead's rekindling of appreciation for Eliot and her books blossoms into a celebration of the entire enterprise of writing and reading, of how literature transforms our lives as it guides us toward embracing "all that might be gained from opening one's heart wider." Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.
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