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Middlemarch
- Narrated by: Maureen O'Brien
- Length: 32 hrs and 23 mins
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Summary
Exclusively from Audible
George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community.
Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfillment leads her into a disastrous marriage to the pedantic scholar Casaubon; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose marriage to the spendthrift beauty Rosamund and pioneering medical methods threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrode, hiding scandalous crimes from his past.
As their stories interweave, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as 'one of the few English novels written for adult people'. Middlemarch explores nearly all matters of concern to modern life, portraying an entire community and every class within it. Full of irony and suspense and even richer in character it shows how individual lives are shaped by and shape the community. Within Middlemarch, we find Eliot's ability to expand the audience's compassion and imagination.
George Eliot was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological insight. When Middlemarch was released Eliot was considered England's finest living novelist with many critics still regarding this novel as the finest in English.
A BAFTA winning adaptation of Middlemarch aired as a television series in 1994.
Narrator Biography
Maureen is an English actress and author best known for playing the role of Vicki in Doctor Who where she starred alongside the original Doctor, William Hartnell. She then went on to appear in The Legend of King Arthur, Casualty, The Duchess of Duke Street, Taggart, Cracker, A Touch of Frost, Heartbeat and Jonathan Creek. In 1985 she made a rare film appearance in the comedy She'll Be Wearing Pink Pyjamas opposite Julie Walters.
Maureen has also appeared in a number of stage productions, for example, The Relapse (Old Vic), The Merchant of Venice (Old Vic), The Archbishop's Ceiling (Bristol Old Vic) and Othello (Bristol Old Vic).
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What listeners say about Middlemarch
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- Auguste Dupin
- 12-05-16
Beautiful reading
What made the experience of listening to Middlemarch the most enjoyable?
Middlemarch is a complex book with many characters and Maureen O'Brien does the impossible by giving each character a distinct and appropriate voice. I listened to it twice.
What did you like best about this story?
I love Victorian novels, but I had never before read Middlemarch which turns out to be the best of them all. Four stories about four (or five) marriages are intertwined around the background of political reform in early 18th century England. The characters are all people that grow more complex with each reading, so that we feel we could know what they would do when out of our sight.
What about Maureen O'Brien’s performance did you like?
She understands the characters very well, and narrates as if the story was coming from her heart and not being read.
If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?
Five weddings and a funeral.
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22 people found this helpful
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- Timedout
- 31-07-15
loved it - social history
George Elliott paints an historic picture of the intricacies of social duty and conscience and you realise that for all our modern advances we haven't come that far socially.
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16 people found this helpful
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- Bob
- 28-08-16
An Exquisite Novel Beautifully Read
Intricate, funny, passionate multi-layered narrative that illuminates human hypocrisy, frailty but also potential for goodness.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 21-09-15
Hard to get started but rewarding when you do.
I loved it. This is a long book, give it time and you'll be rewarded. 200 years on things are fundamentally the same!
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14 people found this helpful
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- Anne
- 20-09-17
Delightful listening
What a delightful well written book. It does start slowly, but is well worth sticking with. You can't beat an old classic, and it was brought to life brilliantly by Maureen O'Brian. I would recommend it to anyone
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11 people found this helpful
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- David Bisset
- 17-09-17
A superb rendition
Maureen O'Brien reads with outstanding clarity and nuances. She deals most convincingly with a wide range of male and female characters who utilised a while gamut of verbal characteristics. She also coped well with dialectical variations. Listening to her rendition was illuminating and pleasurable.
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10 people found this helpful
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- M V Curr
- 06-08-16
good
Compelling story and characters, a wonderful novel. The narrator was annoying at times, some accents or tones of speech given to characters were irritating - esp poor Celia who was made to sound like a petulant five year old throughout. nonetheless, its such a great book one can't resist being. held captive..
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9 people found this helpful
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- J. E.
- 13-02-19
"One of the best novels in English literature"
This is an excellent rendition by Maureen O'Brien of Middlemarch.
A long novel it may be, but worth reading completely to the end and indeed many times over for its uncanny psychological depth and moral realism.
George Eliot adeptly interweaves the life-stories of several characters with unique personalities and histories. No wonder it has been described by other writers in our time as "the best novel in English literature".
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5 people found this helpful
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- Janet
- 17-04-21
Fabulous performance of wonderful novel
I’ve read this wonderful novel many times yet the performance brought out aspects of it that have previously passed by me. The narrator creates the characters vividly and brings a sensitive nuanced understanding to its passages of observation and commentary. I shall certainly listen to it again and highly recommend it. It is long but every word is worth hearing.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Scribella
- 11-09-20
Outstanding narration
The narration of such a huge book, with such a varied cast of characters, was always going to be a challenge - and Maureen O'Brien rises to it magnificently. Her reading and characterisations increased my enjoyment of 'Middlemarch' and made it an absolute pleasure to listen to. As for the book itself... well, it's a classic for a reason - a deceptively ambitious work that uses the apparently modest canvas of a provincial town to paint an impressively sweeping and deep masterpiece about human nature. I particularly enjoyed George Eliot's satirical observations - when she sharpens her pen, she's almost as lacerating as Jane Austen. However, Eliot is far more verbose than Austen and more reminiscent of Dickens, in her tendency to ramble and moralise. This aspect of the work, I enjoyed less... but overall, I found it to be an engrossing, entertaining and satisfying novel - with utterly brilliant audiobook narration.
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3 people found this helpful