Silas Marner by George Elliot
Category: Novel Grade: A-
And so another touchstone of my teenage years falls. In my memory, the two worst books ever written, both required reading in high school, were The Red Badge of Courage and Silas Marner. Last summer, I discovered that Crane's novel was actually really good. Earlier this summer, if you remember, I made some snide comment about Silas Marner in one of my other book reviews. Almost immediately, Christian challenged me, saying it was actually one of his favorites. He's got degrees from Duke and Yale so I, of course, figured he was being elitist and trying to show off his knowledge and sophistication and so, I accepted his challenge and agreed to read the book. I asked our friend who owns the little book store that we use to order it for me. She laughed and said she remembered it to as the worst book she ever read.
What a surprise! This is actually a beautiful little book. The prose, being 150 years old, is a little dense for my taste with paragraphs that can run three or four pages. Given that, however, it was a much more complex story than I expected with incredibly well drawn characters. There are only two things that I can come up with to blame my past feelings about the book. The one I believe is true is that this is just a terrible book to give to 16 or 17 year old kids. Jason even said he had to read the book in middle school! Kids that age just aren't prepared for a book like this and I stick with my belief that, at that age, this is a good book to kill any interest in literature that a kid might have. The other, and probably true theory, given that parts of the story weren't familiar to me at all, was that I actually dodged the assignment in high school and only read parts of the book (or, more likely, read the Cliffs Notes).
This is only a couple of hundred pages long and is a pretty quick read. If you want to challenge your memories of those horrible books from high school, give it a try. You may be surprised.
1 comment:
I have read Silas Marner last year in my Intro the the Novel class. I have to say. That it is and alway will be the worst book ever. Is there a point to him having the ability to heal if your only going to use it once? Then Dunstan ending up dead? What the hell. They could have made that into an awesome plot twist. The only thing I liked about that book is when the horse dies and the ending. The reason I liked the ending is simply because it was over... Till this day I make fun of that book with my teacher, who loves that book, in which ends with every one else who took that class ageeing that Silas Marner is the worst book ever.
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