This story is bleak, dark and heartbreaking. I found this story hard to discuss while reading but have still been thinking about nearly every day since I finished.

Jemisins writing style grabbed me and would not let me go. She feeds you a slow drip of information, just enough to understand the world and pull you through the story while still leaving you mostly in the dark. I liked having no idea what was going to happen next. I have a feeling I may have found a new favorite author.

Also shout out to the person who recommended making a mind map while reading, I don’t remember who it was, but it really helped me keep characters, and details organized towards the beginning of the story.

middlemarch, to me, answers precisely to what i desire in a great classic novel. this is my definition of a perfect interweave of stories about everything and anything- a study of the desires and wanderings of the human soul! love, longing when you don't know what you're longing for, ambition, what we want vs our capabilities, compromise, idealism, marriage, politics, missed chances and failings all woven together into a single tapestry. the exploration of character personalities was done so beautifully it made me feel connected and eager to view their character portraits and discern in them some reflection of the soul’s secret motions. in a work of such length there are storylines that demand a longer patience than others yet eliot gives each its proper moment, so it never feels too distant. for once, it was refreshing to find the subject of marriage not as the conclusion of the narrative, but instead as its opening field of trial and discovery.

eliot’s prose though dense is vivified and coloured by her vein of genius, wit, and modernity so much so that there were moments where i felt as though she were writing directly into the present. there are so many lines i’ve noted that i can’t wait to ruminate on the measure of meaning they carry for me. the drama of the human experience is timeless, and eliot wrote them with ambitious realism.

i think one of the greatest things in literature is finding characters who are flawed and yet so layered that you can’t help but sympathize with them, see parts of yourself in them and also want to understand where they’re coming from. human nature in all its complications is a landscape she navigated her readers to view in different lights by illuminating the smallest detail with grace. there's a lot of moments of forgiveness between characters where the narrator also forgives them. in seeing the struggle and learnings, to be capable of error yet capable of tender self-recognition, it's to forgive them and maybe yourself too. in between individuality and interconnectedness, i understood the characters as individuals as well as in the ways they matter to one another.

dorothea brooke might be one of the best characters i’ve ever encountered in fiction. she is like an english counterpart to anna karenina in her idealism, but far less tragic in outcome. even when her ideals falter against the realities of her world, her depth of feeling remained inspiring. i don’t think I’ll ever forget her. and mary garth!! whom i can’t help but love in an entirely different way. it’s messy, it’s beautiful. my most rewarding reading experience in a long time. i loved my time in middlemarch so much.

“..for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

What the actual fuck am I meant to do with my life after this? George Elliott is a fucking genius the way that she writes people. Her observations of human nature are so incisive and accurate to this day. Makes me wish that she had known me and could immortalise me and my faults with as much tenderness as she has done with her characters. That final paragraph shattered me, throughout the novel you’re sitting beside Elliot in observing these people, tsk tsking their poor decision making and then you’re suddenly being addressed and asked to consider how much the good of your circumstance is owed to those you haven’t even known - urgh! Made me cry.

A very worthwhile read, which I will revisit for sure. Read partly in hard copy and partly in audiobook.

This is an incredibly personal book and I believe the experience of reading it will be heavily dependent on the readers lived experience and their willingness to step gently into Yiyun's world without judgement or projection. I would hope that all choosing to read this memoir would exemplify virtues of empathy, compassion, and also actively find space for reflection.

Although this book is in the public domain, I don't actually believe it is for the general public- its for James, and Vincent too, for Yiyun, and it could be of value to others who may understand being in their own 'personal abyss', having lost someone to suicide. This memoir does not contain any tools, tips, tricks on grief. There is no end date to suffering and Yiyun does not sugarcoat nor hide the reality of the death of her two sons nor find hidden 'meaning' in loss, or what is left behind.

That does not mean this is an unemotional book at all, but for Yiyun things in nature merely grow and those that remain go on living however they can. Yiyun calls her viewpoint 'radical acceptance' (DBT is also mentioned), and as this is a tribute book written for James, it is written in a way that Yiyun as his mother believes James would acknowledge and approve of.

It was a beautiful, raw memoir and I cried unashamedly the whole way through.