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| Why do publishers do this? Romola, the main character, had golden hair. It is mentioned over and over again in this text. Who is this woman on the front cover???? |
I hadn't read a George Eliot novel in years. I read Silas Marner back when I was a teen, and then a few times since. I read Adam Bede in law school at the urging of another student who was a big George Eliot fan and I read Middlemarch after seeing the BBC production of it. But I hadn't read anything since, which was at least 15 or 20 years. I hadn't even heard of Romola before but I've been following Kate Howe's booktube channel and she mentioned wanting to read it in January. So I joined in!
I absolutely loved this novel. It was not the easiest read for me. It is written in a formal Victorian style, very erudite, but everything about it is so well developed. The characters, the plot, the accurate historical presentation, the probing of the issues that confront the main character. It's all so well done, so thoroughly intelligent and immersive.
Romola is a young woman who has grown up under the tutelage of her learned classical scholar of a father, Bardo. He's gone blind now and his son, Romola's brother, has abandoned the classics in favor of becoming a Dominican friar, something the non-believing father sees as a betrayal of the highest order. A new person enters their circle. A shipwrecked young Greek, learned and handsome with great charm, becomes Bardo's assistant. He and Romola fall in love and marry. But who is Tito? What secrets is he hiding and how much will he sacrifice to get ahead in the tumultuous and dangerous world of Renaissance Florence?
So much goes on in this book and yet it never bogs down. I felt swept up into the world of Florence that Eliot portrays so eloquently and so sensitively.
Two thumbs up!
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