My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead
My Life in Middlemarch, Rebecca Mead
1 Rating(s)
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My Life in Middlemarch

Author: Rebecca Mead

Narrator: Kate Reading

Unabridged: 17 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/28/2014


Synopsis

A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth—Middlemarch—and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories.Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's Middlemarch, regarded by many as the greatest English novel. After gaining admission to Oxford and moving to the United States to become a journalist, through several love affairs, then marriage, and family, Mead read and reread Middlemarch. The novel, which Virginia Woolf famously described as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people," offered Mead something that modern life and literature did not.In this wise and revealing work of biography, reportage, and memoir, Rebecca Mead leads us into the life that the book made for her, as well as the many lives the novel has led since it was written. Employing a structure that deftly mirrors that of the novel, My Life in Middlemarch takes the themes of Eliot's masterpiece—the complexity of love, the meaning of marriage, the foundations of morality, and the drama of aspiration and failure—and brings them into our world. Offering both a fascinating reading of Eliot's biography and an exploration of the way aspects of Mead's life uncannily echo that of the author herself, My Life in Middlemarch is for every ardent lover of literature who cares about why we read books, and how they read us.

About Rebecca Mead

Rebecca Mead is a staff writer for the New Yorker and the author of One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding.

About Kate Reading

Kate Reading, named an AudioFile Golden Voice, has recorded hundreds of audiobooks across many genres, over a thirty–year plus career and won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration. Among other awards, she has been recognized as an AudioFile Magazine Voice of the Century, Narrator of the Year, Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy, and winner of an Publisher’s Weekly’s Listen-Up Award. She records at her home studio, Madison Productions, Inc., in Maryland.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Laura on March 13, 2014

Do the people who write the book descriptions actually read the book before writing, or do they go by a proposal? Here's why: this book's description ("A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth--Middlemarch-- and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to......more

Goodreads review by Glenn on July 11, 2020

I’ve only read George Eliot’s Middlemarch once, back in university. It was required reading for an English course, and I remember loving its quiet, perceptive look at various lives intersecting around an English town in the mid 19th century. Today, some *mumble mumble* years later, the novel’s charac......more

Goodreads review by Deborah on April 08, 2014

This review is brought to you by THIS BOOK IS OVERDUE AT THE LIBRARY! SOMEBODY HAS A HOLD ON IT! FINES ARE RACKING UP AS WE SPEAK! HURRY UP AND WRITE YOUR DANGED REPORT, ALREADY! Okay. So. This book is a biography of a book. Specifically, it’s the biography of one woman and how she and a life-changin......more


Quotes

“A perfectly composed offering of literary love and self-observation.” Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“A wise, humane, and delightful study of what some regard as the best novel in English.” Harold Bloom, New York Times bestselling author

“A wonderfully intelligent exploration of a great novel and its great author.” Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author

“A thoroughly engaging mix of memoir and biography…If you haven’t ever read Middlemarch, Mead’s lucid writing will send you straight to the bookstore. A-” Entertainment Weekly

“Beguilingly straightforward, resolutely orthodox, and unshowy account…A poignant testimony to the abiding power of fiction.” New York Times Book Review

“Mead’s middle-aged rediscovery of Middlemarch—and her insights into Eliot’s rich middle age—is not to be missed.” Atlantic

“Beautifully conveys  the excitement of living in a novel, of knowing its characters as if they breathed.” Bookforum

“A rare and remarkable fusion of techniques that draws two women together across time and space.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“The wonderful Kate Reading is the ideal narrator for this quintessentially British audiobook. She’s a master of intonation and offers the most lovely of accents to enliven this unusual text.” AudioFile

“Deeply satisfying…Brings to vivid life the profound engagement that she and all devoted readers experience with a favorite novel over a lifetime.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)


Awards

  • Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week
  • New York Times   Bestseller
  • Amazon Best Book of the Month
  • Library Journal Best Book
  • BookPage Best Book
  • Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books
  • Audie Award
  • Book Riot Pick
  • Literary Hub Pick