'Silas Marner' by George Eliot

I have recently exorcised my nasty habit of abandoning books or dvds when the 'agon' (the action, or the conflict) transforms into something I don't want to deal with. It's not even a sort of dread - more a feeling of tedium. Antagonists and any hindrances to a felicitous end are simply tedious.

Happily, I declare that Silas Marner is (almost) tedium-free. In fact, most of the most affecting conflict is already presented at the start and no real threat comes around during the end except that of the matter of conscience and responsibility - which I don't belittle, mind you, but they are the sort of things I can deal with and that I think are integral to every good book.

So the story begins with the ill-fortunes of Silas Marner the weaver. He is forced to leave his home town by humiliation and disappointment in the human good and relocates to a smaller, small town. He then dedicates the next fifteen years of his life into his weaving, by which means, he manage to accumulate for himself a sizeable fortune. Until he gets robbed...

Don't fret! This book probably has one of the happiest endings I have ever read.

I can't help but commend George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) what with the amount of psychological insight she seems to possess. Really quite impressive. It recalled back to memory all the theories, experiments and whatnot from high school. But writers are great observers of the human psyche and the human condition - such a good one as Evans is, she's no exception.

Men are not the only ones who can write.