Julian Worker's Reviews > Silas Marner

Silas Marner is the first George Eliot book I've read and it won't be the last as you will see from my rating. I saw the book on sale in a second-hand bookshop in Campbell River on Vancouver Island and thought I should buy the book to see whether I would enjoy reading it.

Well, reader, I did.

It's difficult to write a review without giving the plot away, but I will try. The book Silas Marner is a moral fairy tale with many pointed criticisms of the society in which the story takes place. Silas is dying spiritually, suffers a material loss, but is rescued when a child Eppie comes into his life in unusual circumstances. Personally, I would doubt whether in the real world these circumstances would be allowed, but as I said this is a fairy tale in a way and so it's allowed. Eppie starts a transformation in Silas's life, the neighbours rally round and make him feel part of the community, and even his material loss is returned.

I like the conversations between the people in the village of Raveloe where Silas Marner lives. A lot of the words are contractions and there are interesting pronunciations - in other words people are talking in an accent, but a correct accent for the people of the countryside in the part of England where the book is set. That's fine with me, because not everyone uses Received Pronunciation. I like the variety of the conversations as a result and it's a way of distinguishing between the different social classes in the book.