Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life: Bookmarked

"In this trenchant memoir of reading and writing, Pamela Erens returns over a lifetime to George Eliot's Middlemarch. The calm, understanding, and generosity that she finds in Eliot's masterpiece--albeit differently, at different moments in her own life--inflects Erens's own account of becoming, and being, a mother and a writer. This short book is filled with wisdom."--Claire Messud, author of Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write and The Woman Upstairs"Erens makes an engaging and convincing case for the value of reading Middlemarch today, when we are still struggling to answer the questions it raises--about marriage, about community, about society, and especially about how to balance our individual needs and desires against the claims of sympathy and conscience."--Rohan Maitzen, author, Widening the Skirts of Light: Essays on George Eliot and Middlemarch for Book Clubs"Thoughtful, frank, and always artful, Middlemarch and the Imperfect Life is an involving and deeply satisfying account of the reading and writing life."--Rebecca Mead, author, My Life in Middlemarch and Home/LandA masterly evocation of life in a provincial English community, Middlemarch is considered perhaps the greatest novel of the Victorian era, praised by writers from Emily Dickinson to Virginia Woolf. In the latest volume in Ig's acclaimed Bookmarked series, critically lauded author Pamela Erens talks about how Middlemarch "rescued" her, first as a distressed college student, and then during the tragic events of the global pandemic.

Author: Pamela Erens
Publisher: Ig Publishing
Published: 04/26/2022
Pages: 162
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.35lbs
Size: 7.87h x 5.20w x 0.63d
ISBN: 9781632461315

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 02/14/2022

About the Author
PAMELA ERENS' most recent adult novel, Eleven Hours, was named a Best Book of 2016 by NPR, the New Yorker, and Kirkus, and was lauded by publications including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Her previous novel, The Virgins, was a New York Times Book Review and Chicago Tribune Editors' Choice, and was named a Best Book of 2013 by the New Yorker, the New Republic, Library Journal, and Salon. Pamela's work has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Vogue, Elle, and the Virginia Quarterly Review.