Tad Davis’s Reviews > Romola > Status Update

Disappointed that Romola submitted to Savonarola. The novel was just getting interesting, and I was looking forward to her post-Florence adventures; but now she’s right back in the middle of the Florentine suffocation.

The stakes have been raised, and so has the tension. I misjudged the story; it was only slow getting started. Still humorless, though. Tito sold the library, earning Romola’s undying contempt. He confronted his father, who rejected his offer of help and vowed a slow and painful revenge. Romola flees. Tessa has a baby - but is it alive?

Tito has encountered his adoptive father, who has long been a prisoner. Tito had known this for some time but was reluctant to make use of his growing fortune to buy his father’s release. Now he wears chain mail under his cloak. His father is somehow free - I remember that it happened but have already forgotten the details - and is free to seek vengeance if he wants it. So.... does he want it?

Eliot is beginning to draw me into her story. I noticed my interest picking up at the point where a certain “marriage” takes place; everything before that now seems like scene-setting. Tito remains a slimy character despite his ability to charm everyone he meets.

George Eliot continues her humorless plodding through the streets of Florence, pausing every couple of sentences to drop a few more names culled from her obviously extensive research. I wish I liked it more. I want to like it. But in my opinion it’s a failed experiment.

Here’s a quote that shows what I find most irritating about George Eliot:

“All who remember their childhood remember the strange vague sense, when some new experience came, that everything else was going to be changed, and that there would be no lapse into the old monotony.”

I remember my childhood pretty well, and I have no such recollection. She’s trying too hard to make common ground.

I’m having a bit of trouble with this one. George Eliot has no sense of humor; her books are Very Serious. Add to that her apparent need to show the extent of her research on every page, if not in every paragraph, and it’s a slog. But being a completist, I slog on.