What are you reading now?

[vinteuil]

George Moore, Esther Waters, 1894. Influenced by French writers such as Zola, Moore wrote the history of an illiterate young woman in the 1870s who has a baby son while unmarried. Despite many disappointments she manages to look after her son and survive. Moore received much criticism at the time, partly because of its focus on behaviour and aspects of lower-class which the Lending Libraries considered 'unsuitable', but the book was a success and made his name. I found it very interesting as an early realistic study of working life, especially of servants, from a woman's point of view.

I have been trying to read more widely with the aim of discovering authors and works of which I was not aware before. Esther Waters was a major find for me. I expect there will be others here who know it better than I did.

... you might enjoy Mrs Gaskell's Ruth [1853], which engages with the same subject a generation earlier. Mme v has just finished it, and is now considering starting Esther Waters...

.

[smittims]

Thanks for that notice of Priestley, Master Jaques. That sounds interesting to me.

The phenomenon of adjusting to post-war life was a theme for several films and books at the time but has largely, I suppose, been forgotten now it's no longer topical. Many ex-servicemen had had no adult life before the war and simply didn't know what to do. Some just blew their war-serivice gratuity on long-desired luxuries and then probably settled for a dead-end job; others prospered, like the two chaps who had the idea of buying up bombed-sites and turning them into car-parks. They ended up selling National Car Parks for millions. 'You gotta have vision , my son. See?'

[Sir Velo]

I'm surprised that nobody (in the posts I've glanced at) mentions The Mill on the Floss, which in many ways is not only her hardest hitting, but also most 'perfect' novel,

I don't know re Middlemarch being G. Eliot's best, but then that means I will have to re-read Mill on the Floss because I thought that was!

I'm a George Eliot doubter. I couldn't get into The MIll on the Floss. The characters just didn't interest me.

[Master Jacques]

I'm surprised that nobody (in the posts I've glanced at) mentions The Mill on the Floss, which in many ways is not only her hardest hitting, but also most 'perfect' novel, with a scarcely-contained anger about the repression of intelligent girls in favour of dull-witted boys which the years have not dimmed.

As for me, I'd recommend an oddity I finished reading yesterday:

Three Men in New Suits
J. B. Priestley, 1945

Written immediately before his most complex and rounded achievement, Bright Day, the date on this is significant. We're in 1945, with three soldiers returning from the war in their new, ill-fitting civvy suits. The short narrative relates their varied experiences of return, welcome and feelings of alienation. Despite their major social differences - as sensitive aristocrat, thoughtful yeomen farmer and inarticulate quarryman - they find that they can more easily talk to one another than to to their families or anyone else.

Priestley's narrative is beautifully-structured, his characterisations true, his writing vivid. Only his "pamphleteering" in the last few pages (essentially "vote Labour") strikes a creakily Utopian note, eighty years on. Recommended.

[Historian]

There was a good film of Esther Waters in the days of the great British black-and-white era (1948), Kathleen Ryan , and Dirk Bogarde in his first screen role. It turns up on TPTV (channel 82) occasionally.

Thank you for the tip: I will keep an eye out.

[Padraig]

Thank you John, Historian and Barbirollians for your kind wishes and literary comments. I'm particularly gratified to read encouraging views of George Eliot's novels from people who enjoyed them. I have read only two - Middlemarch in my Fifties and Daniel Deronda just recently. I have a vague memory of Silas Marner but Middlemarch took over my reading for two or three years - and the odd re-reading since. When I posted that I was going to read Daniel Deronda last year and asked for opinions I indirectly received the most remarkable encouragement from 'a friend of the Forum' who claimed it was the best book ever read. That stood by me through my Oddyssey.

[Barbirollians]

That happens to be no more that a handy coincidence. I have been absent since Christmas Eve, and I'm reporting back.I thought I would start by updating my reading history - hence the lucky starting point.

Last new year I bought several books and borrowed one from the library.The borrowed one was Daniel Deronda, which I enjoyed immensely and which took me until September to finish. The others were a Michael Connolly LAPD police and courtroom drama, a Mick Herron spy thriller - new kid on the block for me - Rory Stewart's Politics on the edge and Naomi Klein's Doppelganger which I have recently started.

I plan to do something similar this New Year with my book tokens - my first pick being to buy Daniel Deronda, which I have ordered in the same edition as the borrowed copy. This time though I won't exactly be starting 'in res media' as the introduction and notes are extremely helpful. By the way, I am a big fan of George Eliot - devotee is a better word - and Daniel Deronda is a big challenge to Middlemarch. I need to read it again.

If anyone is asking I have been the victim of the worst dose ever which still enfolds me but which is, I think, slowly receding. Energy low but spirit reaching upwards. I hope you all have managed to miss this particular visitor.

Happy New Year

Glad to hear you are on the mend . I recall finding DD harder to read than Middlemarch but I found it a very satisfying read in the end . I remain fond of Adam Bede,Silas Marner and Felix Holt the Radical . To my shame although I have read it I have no memory of Romola at all.

[smittims]

There was a good film of Esther Waters in the days of the great British black-and-white era (1948), Kathleen Ryan , and Dirk Bogarde in his first screen role. It turns up on TPTV (channel 82) occasionally.

[Historian]

George Moore, Esther Waters, 1894. Influenced by French writers such as Zola, Moore wrote the history of an illiterate young woman in the 1870s who has a baby son while unmarried. Despite many disappointments she manages to look after her son and survive. Moore received much criticism at the time, partly because of its focus on behaviour and aspects of lower-class which the Lending Libraries considered 'unsuitable', but the book was a success and made his name. I found it very interesting as an early realistic study of working life, especially of servants, from a woman's point of view.

I have been trying to read more widely with the aim of discovering authors and works of which I was not aware before. Esther Waters was a major find for me. I expect there will be others here who know it better than I did.

[Historian]

Sorry to hear that you've been no weel, Padraig. Hope the mending continues. You've been missed.

Seconded (and will no doubt be followed by many others.

[johncorrigan]

That happens to be no more that a handy coincidence. I have been absent since Christmas Eve, and I'm reporting back.I thought I would start by updating my reading history - hence the lucky starting point.

Last new year I bought several books and borrowed one from the library.The borrowed one was Daniel Deronda, which I enjoyed immensely and which took me until September to finish. The others were a Michael Connolly LAPD police and courtroom drama, a Mick Herron spy thriller - new kid on the block for me - Rory Stewart's Politics on the edge and Naomi Klein's Doppelganger which I have recently started.

I plan to do something similar this New Year with my book tokens - my first pick being to buy Daniel Deronda, which I have ordered in the same edition as the borrowed copy. This time though I won't exactly be starting 'in res media' as the introduction and notes are extremely helpful. By the way, I am a big fan of George Eliot - devotee is a better word - and Daniel Deronda is a big challenge to Middlemarch. I need to read it again.

If anyone is asking I have been the victim of the worst dose ever which still enfolds me but which is, I think, slowly receding. Energy low but spirit reaching upwards. I hope you all have managed to miss this particular visitor.

Happy New Year

Sorry to hear that you've been no weel, Padraig. Hope the mending continues. You've been missed.

[Padraig]

So I can't say I'm an Eliot devotee.

That happens to be no more that a handy coincidence. I have been absent since Christmas Eve, and I'm reporting back.I thought I would start by updating my reading history - hence the lucky starting point.

Last new year I bought several books and borrowed one from the library.The borrowed one was Daniel Deronda, which I enjoyed immensely and which took me until September to finish. The others were a Michael Connolly LAPD police and courtroom drama, a Mick Herron spy thriller - new kid on the block for me - Rory Stewart's Politics on the edge and Naomi Klein's Doppelganger which I have recently started.

I plan to do something similar this New Year with my book tokens - my first pick being to buy Daniel Deronda, which I have ordered in the same edition as the borrowed copy. This time though I won't exactly be starting 'in res media' as the introduction and notes are extremely helpful. By the way, I am a big fan of George Eliot - devotee is a better word - and Daniel Deronda is a big challenge to Middlemarch. I need to read it again.

If anyone is asking I have been the victim of the worst dose ever which still enfolds me but which is, I think, slowly receding. Energy low but spirit reaching upwards. I hope you all have managed to miss this particular visitor.

Happy New Year

[smittims]

I too much enjoyed Scenes from Clerical Life. I enjoy re-reading Middlemarch but I'm afraid I have to skip chunks which I feel are redundant , such as the long account of Dr. Lydgate's earlier life. And I never much cared for Will Ladislaw : at least, not as much as I feel the author wants me to care. So I can't say I'm an Eliot devotee.

[Barbirollians]

Must read Scenes of a Clerical Life - have read all her other fiction from discovering her work in the sixth form . If anyone has not yet read Middlemarch - what a treat awaits.

[Master Jacques]

Oh dear,Sir Velo. I think Ian's taken you too seriously/literally!

I love Scott and regard him as one of the finest of all novelists. But, as with Wagner and other 19th-century masters, one has to give him time and see him in context.

Quite so. I have loved his novels for many decades, and they get better every time I reread them. I recently recommended an opera-loving Spanish colleague of mine to read the (apparently very good) translation of The Bride of Lammermoor ('La novia de Lammermoor') and his first comment was, "where has this marvellous book been all my life?"

The influence of Scott's novels and long poems was immense throughout Europe, but especially in Germany and Italy, in their time. I dare say that no British writer outside Shakespeare has had a greater influence on world literature, even Dickens. Certainly no British novelist has had so many operas based on their work. Scott operas make up a three-volume novel in themselves.

Having said which, I should have loved to have heard the opera which Tchaikovsky was planning at the time of his death, based on one of George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life. Strange but true. And if anyone cares to read Mr Gilfil's Love Story - time very well spent - I think they'll see exactly what appealed to him about the clerical hero and ill-fated musical heroine.