2 posts tagged “elizabeth gaskell”
Note: There might be some spoilers here. We'll see.
After reading -- and absolutely loving and devouring -- Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters through DailyLit.com, I thought that I'd tackle another Gaskell book, Mary Barton.
A brief overview from Amazon: While Mary Barton is literally a murder mystery, it is also an abundantly detailed and sympathetic view of the nineteenth-century English weaving village of Manchester and some of its people. Mary Barton is young, kind, and beautiful -- perhaps dangerously so. John Barton, her hearty and intelligent but grievously uneducated father who "could never abide the gentlefolk," pours fierce love and courage into his family and work. Mary's love -- for her father, her friends, her charming rich suitor (the son of a factory owner), and his rival, her faithful childhood friend Jem who "loves her above life itself" -- provides rich texture and suspense in this finely spun tale: will Mary's pride be her ruin? Will Jem pay with his life for his love of Mary? Interspersed with sparse but regular authorial observation, scenes from family life, work, and love in a nineteenth-century industrial village come alive.
My friend Hillary originally recommended Mary Barton to me a while ago and said, "yeah, try counting how many people die."
I stopped counting after a while. A lot of people die. But one of Gaskell's main themes is the vast difference between the working class and the wealthy, and how so many people died deplorable, painful deaths from starvation in 1840's Manchester because of that divide. There is a very strong (heck, let's call it preachy) Christian/moral theme to this book, especially toward the end, about witnessing the suffering of another man and doing nothing to relieve it. One's inhumanity toward another is inexcusable in Gaskell's eyes (as it should be in everyone's eyes, don't you think?).
On the other hand, there is the love/murderous triangle between Mary, Mr. Carson, and Jem, which is excellently portrayed, with intrigue, suspicion, and red herrings. The relationships in the book outside this love triangle are even better -- Mary and her father, Margaret and Will, Job and everyone, Alice and everyone, Jem and his mother, etc. These relationships are all so rich and well-developed.
The plot is depressing, exciting, boring, sobering, and loving, all in one. Hillary particularly liked the middle of the novel where Mary Baron plays detective. I must agree, and add that the boat chase was fantastic. Mary Barton would translate to film really well, I feel. Come on, Andrew Davies! Tackle it!
My Rating: 7 out of 10, for being in stark contrast to the fluttering world of Wives and Daughters. But it definitely showed Gaskell's range as a writer. Some of the parts about labor unions bogged the story down a bit, but all in all I'd definitely recommend this one.
Here's a quick review of this book: I loved it! It was all things wonderful, and it made me want to be the main character, Molly, mostly because she's so very good, despite difficult circumstances. And in addition to the book, I highly recommend the miniseries version, starring Justine Waddell, Keeley Hawes, Francesca Annis, and the always swoon-worthy Anthony Howell. In my humble opinion, it's nearly, if not just as good as Pride & Prejudice. See it. Buy it. NOW.
But what I really wanted to review in this post, is DailyLit.com. I read this entire book through my email! It's 720 pages long, and it took me about three months. Basically, DailyLit sends me an email every day, with couple pages of the book in it (which I read in about two and a half minutes). It had 322 parts, so it should have taken me almost a year. But there were a lot of days when I would click "send me the next installment immediately" so that I could continue reading.
At first I was skeptical, but I've found DailyLit to be very useful when standing in line, because I can read my email on my phone. It was a lot easier than taking my real book out of my purse to read it. It was also nice if there were short breaks at work. And I think it might be good for people who can't seem to make time to read during their day, but could probably set aside five minutes of reading in their email. There are a lot of books available on the site, including many classics that are free. There are books you can pay for, but I'm satisfied with the classics for now. Gaskell's Mary Barton starts coming on Monday!
Then again, this will never replace my real books (of which I have 16 boxes, by the way). I love the feel of a book in my hands, and my actual books never run out of batteries like my phone or my computer do.
My Rating (for the book, not the website): 9 out of 10 for being nearly perfect in all ways. I am such a romantic -- I loved this novel.
