I think reading 714 in Malaga exercised my reading muscle and perhaps that was why I couldn’t be bothered with 715. I think, on the 3rd or possibly 4th ever reading, that this is the best English novel. Need to justify that now.
Well, it is just wonderful, long but with a beautifully evolving plot of huge psychological complexity as the key 10 or so characters interact, develop and change as it all develops. I had never noticed before but the minor characters play a role very like the attendant gentlemen or rude mechanicals in Shakespeare, pushing the plot along through whole chapters of commentary on the events in Middlemarch in the local pub or marketplace.
The major characters, Dorothea, Lydate, his wife Rosamund and Ladislaw, along with the Garth’s, Fred Vincy, the Bulstrodes and Mr Brooke are all wonderfully developed, and lots of interesting minor characters as well. Just brilliant.
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