This book took me a loooong time to read, but I’m really glad I read it. It is so well-written and a really good mystery. I did guess some of the plot elements, but I still was very engrossed and wanted to keep reading to make sure my guesses were correct.
The “woman in white” is Anne Catherick, who has escaped from an asylum and knows, or think she knows, a Secret about a nobleman. This nobleman wants to marry Laura Fairlie, but she is in love with her art instructor, Walter Hartwright. Marian Holcomb is Laura’s half-sister and is always looking out for Laura’s interests. The two are inseparable. Will Laura marry the nobleman–Percival Glyde–the man her father wanted her to marry? Or will she marry Walter Hartwright, the love of her life? Who is really after her money? Is Count Fosco just a charming foreigner or a “foreign spy”? Whose interests is he looking after? These questions and more will be answered when you embark on this wonderfully written gothic tale–a classic mystery that should be read by all.
Silas Marner is a weaver who has cut himself off from the world because of a severe wrong done to him. He becomes a hermit and a miser who only cares about his gold. When his gold is stolen from him, he is devastated. However, losing the money actually wakes him up a bit because he has to converse with his neighbors about his loss, whereas before he would only talk “business”.
Soon a little girl comes into his life that opens up his heart and soul. Their love for each other as two “castaways” is truly heartwarming. Highly recommended classic.
Favorite passages:
Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.
The yoke a man creates for himself by wrong-doing will breed hate in the kindliest nature; and the good-humoured, affectionate-hearted Godfrey Cass was fast becoming a bitter man, visited by cruel wishes, that seemed to enter, and depart, and enter again, like demons who had found in him a ready-garnished home.
Favourable Chance, I fancy, is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in…Let him forsake a decent craft that he may pursue the gentilities of a profession to which nature never called him, and his religion will infallibly be the worship of blessed Chance, which he will believe in as the mighty creator of success. The evil principle deprecated in that religion is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind.
Formerly, his heart had been as a locked casket with its treasure inside; but now the casket was empty, and the lock was broken.
The fountains of human love and of faith in a divine love had not yet been unlocked, and his soul was still the shrunken rivulet, with only this difference, that its little groove of sand was blocked up, and it wandered confusedly against dark obstruction.
As the child’s mind was growing into knowledge, his mind was growing into memory: as her life unfolded, his soul, long stupefied in a cold narrow prison, was unfolding too, and trembling gradually into full consciousness.
In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child’s.
But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. (Jude 1:20-21, ESV)
