Daniel Deronda

I finished this book about a month ago and have been letting my thoughts first simmer and then actually almost get pushed onto the back burner as our summer holidays began. Once I decided to look over my notes, I realized that a review might be quite overwhelming. Furthermore, the book did not neces......more

(Re-read from June 07 to June 12, 2012) I had forgotten what a hard work reading Daniel Deronda was. It has to be Eliot’s most challenging and overwhelming novel, yet such a great pleasure to read and re-read! It's enormously ambitious novel, broad in its scope, space, time and history. The setting i......more

Now here’s a book that combines two of my very favorite things: classic British romance with – YES! – Jewish themes. Marian Evans a/k/a George Eliot even went to Frankfurt am Main to do research for the book – in the times of no less than Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch! I think I’ve found a thesis topic i......more

This was one of those long stories that in the end were worth a read. I have previously read “Middlemarch” by George Eliot, but in many ways I find “Daniel Deronda” to be a different story that is interesting in many ways. Our main character, Gwendolen, is quite a character. She’s selfish, attention......more

While ostensibly the story of one Daniel Deronda, a young man of (we learn) unknown parentage, raised to be an educated Englishman of worth and standing, this novel is also the tale of Gwendolen Harleth, and how their lives intersect. We are introduced to both early on and see them off and on over t......more