I would recommend this audiobook to any friend who had a philosophical mind, who delights in interior, rather than exterior events, who can appreciate the mind of a truly masterful writer. Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why? I'm now listening to Mill on the Floss by Eliot.Įxquisite performance of a masterful literary work

If you haven't read Eliot, or you did long ago, do give Middlemarch a go as great as literature can get. From 32 to the end, I was completely moved. DD didn't really grab me, seriously grab me, until chapter 32. I first read Middlemarch- an amazingly brilliant book, and was so taken with Eliot that I then chose Daniel Deronda. Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you? No, I haven't listened to her other readings. Have you listened to any of Nadia May’s other performances before? How does this one compare? The conversations and feelings shared between Daniel and Ezra. What was one of the most memorable moments of Daniel Deronda?

The story is interesting and morally important. What did you love best about Daniel Deronda?Īs with all of George Eliot's books, the language is astounding and the insights into human nature are deep. Overall, if you liked Middlemarch, or even if you didn't but like books of this scale, this is strongly recommended. Also interesting was Gwendolen's moral evolution, which is almost Dostoevsky-like in scope. Most interesting was the presentation of Daniel's mother, who fascinatingly undercuts all the neat narrative presented before her. Everything in the novel intertwines and echoes, presenting stories that seem to play out an alternative narrative if this character or that made a different choice. Daniel's story is one of a search for identity and purpose, as he first rescues a Jewish girl and then falls in with her Zionist brother. But it turns into something darker and more interesting by showing the misery of marrying for money, as well as the remarkable constraint that merely being part of 'polite society' can incur. Gwendolen's story is very Jane Austen like at first, with a lively, spirited girl navigating a meat market type of marriage circuit. Daniel Deronda has two intertwining stories of Daniel and Gwendolen. This one had a larger scale and more sweeping implications. Middlemarch had a very good description of two bad marriages, and the way that such marriages can ruin a person's idealism, but it confined itself to 'small' and provincial lives.

Daniel deronda