From the Bookshelf of 2025 & 2026 Reading Challenge…

North and South

Elizabeth Gaskell

Start date: January 1, 2023

Finish date: January 31, 2023

Discussion: November 2025 Group Read

Why we're reading this: Group Read for January 2023
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November 2025 Group Read

The Travelling Cat Chronicles: Mid-Reading Discussion
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What Members Thought

Nov 15, 2016 Barbara rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, not-on-my-shelves, 2016-reads, england, classic

Superb, and a wonderful surprise. I can't believe this book was written in the mid-19th century. Margaret Hale is the daughter of a clergyman and lives in a rural southern town with her mother and father. Her brother is absent and we later learn why. When the father loses his faith, the family is forced to leave the rectory and his church and they move to a northern mill town. Margaret develops sympathy for the factory workers and grows close to one family. The workers go on strike, and Irish wo ...more

15 likes · Like · see review

Jan 08, 2022 Ketutar Jensen rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Such whiny people.

Very unsatisfactory, because I find the hero pretty unlikable. How much would it have cost him to give the "hands" a raise? But, sure, he got married to a rich heiress, and didn't need to... uh.
What ever.

Elizabeth Gaskell is a good author, but I dislike this book rather much.

It starts with a selfish man dragging his family away from their home to this dirty, sad industrial town in North, and then whining rest of his life because of the consequences.
His wife was terminally il Such whiny people.

Very unsatisfactory, because I find the hero pretty unlikable. How much would it have cost him to give the "hands" a raise? But, sure, he got married to a rich heiress, and didn't need to... uh.
What ever.

Elizabeth Gaskell is a good author, but I dislike this book rather much.

It starts with a selfish man dragging his family away from their home to this dirty, sad industrial town in North, and then whining rest of his life because of the consequences.
His wife was terminally ill, and chose to not discuss with anyone (either), so when her family finds out, it's a terrific blow.
The father of the family expects his 18 years old daughter to deliver all bad news to his wife, and the mother makes the daughter responsible for the father's peace of mind. So when the mother dies, the daughter cannot mourn, because she has to take care of the father. Who, of course, mourns with all the emotional flagellations and excuses one can expect.
And, servants don't have any feelings, so we don't need to care one bit about the mother's maid, who loved her probably more than her husband and daughter. But, as servants don't have any feelings, it's totally fine to expect her to keep working without a hitch as if nothing had happened.
Also, for some weird reason, the couple had send their daughter to live and be raised by the mother's sister in London. So, when the father goes and dies at the old age of 55, the aunt comes and takes the girl back to London, where she is being treated as her cousin's companion.
The cousin is newly wed and has a son, and Margaret becomes the boy's nanny. Her cousin seems to be a total airhead who doesn't do anything.
So - next dies Mr. Bell who is a rich man who left his fortune to Margaret, and - of course - the London family decides she should marry her cousin's husband's brother, who is in love with her, to keep her close by as the cousin's companion, the boy's nanny, and to keep the money in the family.
But, Margaret has gone and fallen in love with what ever f his name is, the conservative a-hole mill owner, in the proper Pride and Prejudice manner (he asks her to marry her, she refuses, and then spends rest of the book being ashamed of how she did it, and Elizabeth Gaskell even invented a smaller scandal the guy can save Margaret from, to add more burning coals over her head, and make her "understand" what a swell guy he really is, even though the first impressions told differently.)
Frankly, I don't believe in that love, or the happiness of the marriage. The hero's basic values are very much against the heroine's basic values, his mother hates her, and there is a history of miscommunications, misunderstandings, and carrying a grudge.
Urgh. ...more

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