Eliot, George "Silas Marner"

Eliot, George "Silas Marner" - 1861

I have read several novels by George Eliot and liked them all. So, it was no surprise that I also enjoyed reading about Silas Marner and his life. There are a lot of books set in this location and time-frame (English Midlands, French wars of the early 1800's) and I always compare this author to Charles Dickens who lived at the same time and described similar lives.

But, you can tell that this is a woman who wrote the book, she makes different observations, I don't want to say they are deeper or better, just different. And thereby, she adds a lot to the understanding of people from that era.

Maybe we could say this book is about karma. As Oscar Wilde said: "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily That is what fiction means." Stories like this one confirm this.

I will certainly have to read more books by George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans).

From the back cover:

"Although the shortest of George Eliot's novels, Silas Marner is one of her most admired and loved works. It tells the sad story of the unjustly exiled Silas Marner - a handloom linen weaver of Raveloe in the agricultural heartland of England - and how he is restored to life by the unlikely means of the orphan child Eppie. Silas Marner is a tender and moving tale of sin and repentance set in a vanished rural world and holds the reader's attention until the last page as Eppie's bonds of affection for Silas are put to the test."