Middlemarch

Known for her social commentary on women's roles and class strictures, Eliot delves into the romantic dilemmas of the Brooke sisters and others in a provincial Midlands town. Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) surrounds the protagonists with a gallery of characters from many social classes--laborers, shopkeepers, clergy, landed gentry, and others. Kate Reading portrays Eliot's characters with a faultless British accent and lends the prose emphasis and expression. As the novel's several couples are trapped by societal judgments, irreversible mistakes, indecision, and restraint, their dilemmas, as well as Eliot's psychological insights and use of irony, make them sound like modern figures. Reading's well-paced, measured narration captures the novel's realism--with its fresh rendering of a complex and often harsh social world. A.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine


George Eliot's novels often involve a kaleidoscope of characters, and MIDDLEMARCH is no exception. Dorothea and Rosamond are two young women whose marriages lead to inevitable conflict. The big themes involving social and personal responsibility, fate, and morality recur again and again as the listener meets the colorful residents whose lives are knit into those of Dorothea and Rosamond. Kate Reading handles the lively, often complex, prose with alacrity, dancing along Eliot's witty commentary with engaging skill. The novel is certainly long, but the diligent listener is rewarded with a story full of twists and turns. L.B.F. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine