In Australia the book is called "The Road to Middlemarch: My life with George Eliot" and is about an important book, its themes and how it came to be, as well as its impact on a reader. I read Middlemarch earlier this year and loved revisiting the characters through Rebecca Mead's biography/ memoir. The power of literature, a power I have long felt, is celebrated here.

Disappointing. 'Middlemarch' is one of my favourite novels and one which I know - or used to know - quite well. That Rebecca Mead's curious blend of literary criticism, biography and autobiography has made me want to go back to read George Eliot's novel again is, for me, its greatest achievement. The truth is that the idea of 'The Road To Middlemarch' ended up being far more interesting than the book itself. There is nothing wrong with Mead's account of Eliot's life, and some of her analysis of 'Middlemarch' is illuminating. The real problem, though, lies in the autobiographical element. Mead reveals little of real interest about herself and, most importantly, fails to make enough significant connections between the novel, her reading of it and her life. These three elements sit uncomfortably beside each other without any sense of how each illuminates and informs the other. So what promises to be a book which is about the significance of reading and our relationship with books ends up being unsure of what, exactly, it is trying to do. It's not so much 'lit memoir' as 'bit memoir'.

This might be a bit of a niche book...but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was worried it might veer too far into Julie and Julia territory, but Mead manages to weave in her own connections to the book without losing sight of her guiding questions that pertain to all readers: "What can this Victorian novel teach us about modern times? Why is it so enduring?" Overall it reads much like a biography of George Eliot, and I recommend this book if you, like me, have read and reread its over 700-page long inspiration and are interested in hearing someone else's take on why.

So… George Eliot is my person. I love her. She gets me. Her books are really good. The way most Goodreads people seem to feel about Virginia Woolf, is how I feel about George Eliot. I like her so much that I even like the things that, when you read enough tellings of them, are annoying or dumb or snotty or flawed. I like them all. This is going to skew everything I ever read about her and her novels, so there is my disclaimer.

I've looked forward to reading this book for a long time, you guys!

This book goes straight for me: George Eliot is important to Rebecca Mead, too, and she is reflecting on that personal significance by discussing the themes and history of her favorite Eliot novel. This is 100% something I would love to do, too! I have tons to say about what role my favorite Eliot book has had in my life, how connected I feel to the events of Eliot's personal life while she wrote it, and how I foresee its significance maturing as my life moves along. Very likely most of us could do this, with some book or other. Rebecca Mead just comes very close to mine.

(FWIW, "my" book is The Mill on the Floss — my horrible inadequate review — and I think about it all the time. When I see a copy, I play the "open to a random page" game and then stop before I claw my face right off, it's so emotional to me. A little codependent tradition we've got.)

Personally, I like Middlemarch fine, though its general adulation occasionally makes me wonder if it's maybe the only Eliot that those people ever read. I haven't read everything yet either, so what do I know, but I like at least two others better. But hey, that's okay. It teaches me what I like in books. It teaches me what "Literature" likes in books. And most validly of all, Rebecca Mead is here telling me what she likes in books.

Her telling, here, isn't actually supremely specific to Middlemarch. A reader could conclude many of these things with many other books. But you know what? Doesn't matter. For her, this is the book, the one through which she can filter everything in her world. Isn't that awesome? It is awesome. I love that.

However: after finishing, I'm not surprised by the reviewers who think Mead's book is a little bit mislabeled. While it does everything it says it will in the description, it should really be noted how emphasized Eliot's biography is as a subject, and how much space it's given here. Most chapters, rather than being structured around Middlemarch or Mead's personal thoughts, are actually structured around a telling of Eliot's life that is enhanced by those other things. This surprised me, because biography is well-covered ground, and a big responsibility to deliver to new readers. And then in writing a personal book, as Mead is, glossing over the bits of Eliot's life that she's less interested in analyzing is not a very balanced approach. I did a healthy amount of biographical reading for a thesis only last year, so I've still got a decent grasp on the main narrative of Eliot's life. If it were up to me, I would make some different choices than Mead does of what to include and what to say about it, pertaining to parts of her novels. But again, I can't fault her for not writing "my" book, because she's writing hers.

Clearly, Mead definitely knows more than me, and I was reading several things for the first time, or that were told here in a way I finally took note of. She particularly spends a lot of time on Eliot's partner Lewes's sons, including some revealing letters by Thornie Lewes that haven't been published before. They're not completely on-topic, but it's a fun section in a face-palmy way. (RIYL Victorian racism, and comparisons of shooting "bushmen" to hunting "chimps and gorillas." Kids those days!) I also really enjoyed the chapter about Eliot's Oxford friends (Mark Pattison and Emily Strong), by whom it was/is widely conjectured that Middlemarch's Dorothea and Casaubon were inspired. Whether or not this theory is true or makes good sense, Mead writes a really entertaining analysis of their true story and I loved learning about them.

The thing I loved most, though, and the most original thing that Mead does in the book (and unsurprisingly, something I would LOVE to do!), is to go and make pilgrimage to as many of Eliot's landmarks as she can. All of her homes, all of the areas that influenced her writing during the Middlemarch period, Mead hops around and stares them all down. This is the perfect connective tool for this book: it fits a telling of both Eliot's life story as well as Mead's own, and has the built-in perspective of centuries. How do places and things — books, artifacts — reach us over time? Do they lose or gain value? Can they do both?

I love visiting historic sites for this reason (especially old homes), so I was extremely excited to see what Mead would find. Eliot's childhood home is a pub (the house still stands), her young adult home is a graffitied Bangladeshi community center (the house still stands), but the home she shared with Lewes for fifteen years ("The Priory") is a train track. And Mead goes to see it. I would go to see it, too! I might, if I go to London. It's worth it to me, the place. The place has value. When Mead goes to them, she speaks to people there, she looks inside, she asks to see the special rooms. It's worth it to her, too.

She also takes some wonderful research opportunities, like reviewing Eliot's notebooks and Middlemarch's original manuscript at their special library collections. And because this is Mead's book, about her own experience as a lover of this great novel, she gets to tell us how that feels, in addition to what's in them. How does the notebook smell, for heaven's sake? (LIKE A FIREPLACE!) This type of legit research experience, together with the everyday experiences of museum visits and the more personal visits she goes out of her way to do (she visits Lewes's living descendants! SHE HOLDS ELIOT'S PEN!), combine into a very trustworthy and relatable narrative experience.

More of Mead's own memoir would have enhanced this book for me. She mentions her life events a lot, but hangs on to a good amount of her journalism-trained reserve, and so does not go very deep. Probably the only thing I like more than a person talking about their favorite book is a person speaking deeply about their lives, so if there were a little more of both of those in this book I can't imagine how incredibly much more I would love it, too.

Partly, I feel that I myself am seeking a leader, someone who can write to me about life and George Eliot and how to read and connect. I'm so grateful that this book exists in order to take a step and go there.

I studied George Eliot extensively in college and feel like I could have written some of this memoir myself. It brought back wonderful memories of discussions of Eliot and Middlemarch with my favorite professor at Wheaton, Sheila Shaw. While not a book of interest to everyone, for me it was a lovely read.

Very interesting dissection of an important English writer's life and works, with a good tie in to the modern reader.

It made me want to reread all the George Eliot I read in high school and al the ones I missed.

“All readers make books over in their own image, and according to their own experience. My Middlemarch is not the same as anyone else’s Middlemarch; it is not even the same as my Middlemarch of twenty-five years ago.”

A total delight to read, full of tidbits abut George Eliot's life and insights about her greatest work. I have to protest, though, and say that the title was a tease. The author was withholding as all heck about her own life, which wouldn't bother me except it provided a really jarring contrast to Eliot's psychological depth and unflinching character analysis. Still, the passion of the reader, the literary love-letter quality of the project, makes it a must-read for those of us who consider ourselves non-academic Victorian lit obsessives.

Too much "Middlemarch", not enough "My Life: A Memoir". The title and description are misleading - 90% of this is a chapter-by-chapter retelling of Middlemarch, with a few paragraphs sprinkled in about the similarities between the book and author's life.