Title: My Life in Middlemarch (Goodreads)
Author: Rebecca Mead
Published: Crown, 2014
Pages: 293
Genres: Non-Fiction
My Copy: Library Book
Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle (or visit your local Indie bookstore)
Rebecca Mead grew up in a coastal town in England and often dreamed of escaping to somewhere more exciting. She gained admission to Oxford and later become a journalist in the United States. When she was young Middlemarch was a favourite of hers and now as she re-reads this classic she is sharing her story along with it. My Life in Middlemarch is told partly as a bookish memoir, but also explores the life of George Eliot and her novel Middlemarch.
This book started off really well; in the prelude the reader gets to discover a bit about the life of Rebecca Mead. Beginning like a bookish memoir this insight into the author gave a fascinating look into her relationships with books, especially with Middlemarch. However as I progressed with My Life in Middlemarch, the memoir elements became fragmented and I found myself yearning to return to this style. I love bookish memoirs, I have been reading so many of them lately and this had the potential to be great but it had two other strands to weave into this book.
My Life in Middlemarch also looks at the life of George Eliot, which allows some perspective about this author. Though I had already done some extensive research. I know that the life of Eliot played a big part in understanding Middlemarch so my autodidactic nature kicked in and I learned a bit about her. I was reading Middlemarch with a reading guide as well, so I had the added advantage of gaining some insight as I read. Apart from access to George Eliot’s journals, I didn’t gain much information; it was a very broad strokes look at her life and I would have gained that information from Wikipedia. I would have been better off reading a biography or her journals instead.
Finally we come to the literary criticism within this book and yet again I felt a little disappointed. I would have liked to know what Rebecca Mead got from the book but instead she just referenced others people’s criticisms on the novel. Having smarter people’s insight into Middlemarch is useful but I would enjoy a personal opinion mixed in with all the references. It reminds me on how I write a research paper for university; I pack it with quotes and references that say what I want it to say but don’t offer much in the way of personal opinion
Combine these three parts and you have an accessible look at Rebecca Mead and her life with Middlemarch but it felt like a huge generalisation. There are some interesting elements worth exploring in this book and I feel like it could have done so much more. We have three interwoven strands within the book but nothing of substance from any of them. This would be an enjoyable book for someone that has not read Middlemarch but for me, I had just finished the classic and I picked this book up because I was not ready to move on.
I was really disappointed with this book. It seemed more about her relationship with her projected version of Eliot than it did about her relationship with Middlemarch. I didn’t buy her version of Eliot. The woman was a genuine genius but I didn’t get any sense of that from Mead. She seemed to reduce Eliot to wife and stepmother. Idk. It was really lightweight and I was bored.
That is a good reason not to enjoy the book. I wish she focus on one thread instead of so many
I think I’ll just read Middlemarch and skip this, although it was in my tentative to-be-read mountain.
You might enjoy it but I wanted more from every thread. But you HAVE to read Middlemarch, it is wonderful
Yes yes it’s to be read for sure. Too little time, too many slumps… too much Quizup… you know how it is.
I don’t get distracted by Quizup. Currently my distraction is BookTube and watching to see if my stats will go up.