Silas Marner by George Eliot

8/10

Just finished reading this tonight. Mallory again chose it from a group of four books I had chosen. She liked the little girl on the cover.

This was a solid novel. It was my first George Eliot book and I enjoyed her writing. She has a slightly unique writing style that demands focused attention. She writes well but not simply. I caught myself having to re-read certain parts not because I wasn't paying attention but because my brain didn't quite comprehend what was being written. But after the re-read I usually caught on to what was being said and would even reflect that it really could not have been written any other way. Here's an example of one that I liked: "A dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic." Good stuff.

And the story was interesting as well. The Silas Marner character was well done. Most of the other side characters were pretty boring by and large though. Not too boring, but I was mostly just interested in Marner.

There are a few quotes I could share but I have decided to just do this longish paragraph that I really liked:

"Favorable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in. Let even a polished man of these days get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor himself on the chance, that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend's confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity called Chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know; let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities of a profession to which nature never called him, and his religion will infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will believe in as the mighty creator of success. The evil principle deprecated in that religion is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind."