I love George Eliot’s writing. I was reminded of this one when I saw that @mouse was reading it and went to see if I had a copy. I found it, then I couldn’t put it down. (I’m very suggestible when it comes to George Eliot and Jane Austen) Where Austen is almost all sparkling dialog, I love Eliot’s descriptiveness, the way she captures the feeling of a place down to the dirt and the rocks. The characters are relatably weird and superstitious; the cultural norms and beliefs that shift from village to village make me nostalgic for an unconnected world. Morality in the story is very black and white but that gives it the quality of a fable. It casts Silas Marner as a kind of spiritual figure, an outsider who becomes the moral center; kind of a conduit for the metaphysical life of the village.