add it up

xciii. middlemarch’ by george eliot.
i would say that this novel has the greatest number of fully realised characters and interwoven family histories that i have ever read. many novels would struggle to encompass but one fourth of the narrative threads, notwithstanding the spectrum of moral, monetary and matrimonial quandaries explored within. i find many novels are vertical in terms of epic family histories but i liked that the interactions across the community during a single generation instead show the reality that minor events drive the dramas of life.
ok basically it was good and people are complicated! #braindead

xciv. the snows of kilimanjaro, hemingway
it was quite good. the 2nd half of the collection mainly concerned one character, nick, and i never know what to think when a character recurs in an otherwise seemingly themeless collection. though of course the entire book focused on the classic hemingway themes of drinking, men and women, gambling, europe, fishing, bullfighting, the usual. mostly i like that hemingway describes landscape through its relationship with the characters’ actions.

xcv. the mistress’s daughter,  a.m. homes
read this apparently for the 2nd time even though i forgot that when i borrowed it at the library. as a memoir i found it interesting and unusual in that apart from the subject of her adoption and birth parents she didn’t really discuss anything else, whereas most other memoirs that i’ve read apparently give everything up too easily.

xcvi. the portrait of a lady, henry james
i have realised it may in fact be possible to read too much, i was getting burned out for a while there but once i hit the 2nd half of the book i breezed right through it. oh man, what to say? someone told me they couldn’t get into the book because they didn’t like isabel, but clearly they hadn’t gotten far enough to see how heinous some of the other characters were. in the end it wasn’t so much a portrait of her as her unfortunate involvement in a larger plot, though it was always through her lens that everything was experienced. pansy’s name truly befit her, sad to say, even though it wasn’t her fault. my impression of caspar goodwood also wasn’t very good, he seems so boring and wooden. ralph was my favourite. i expected a more conclusive ending as well but i suppose it is suitably ambivalent.