an__otherbook

‘She did not really see the streak of sunlight on the floor more than she saw the statues: she was inwardly seeing the light of years to come in her own home and over the English fields and elms and hedge-bordered highroads: and feeling that the way in which they might be filled with joyful devotedness was not so clear to her as it had been. But in Dorothea’s mind there was a current into which all thought and feeling were apt sooner or later to flow—the reaching forward of the whole consciousness towards the fullest truth, the least partial good. There was clearly something better than anger and despondency.’

The backdrop of Eliot’s novel is coloured by politics, local elections, a nation on the verge of change. What takes centre stage is the complex and complicated nature of relationships. Relationship to one’s self, to others, to the place you come from, to where you desire to be. A cast of characters wrestle with their positions in life, their motivations, and their desires. It is so much a novel about imperfections, the struggle to be good, and how the course of a life is one strand in a tapestry of many—and that’s how life comes together.