This book was a recommendation from one of my favorite college professors (I had a bunch of favorites, but Professor Freeman was something special). She was trimming down her library, preparing for a move to the east coast, and she invited everyone to come to her office and take a couple books. I chose this one and The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. Both of them were excellent, but The Lifted Veil is what we’re talking about today.

I’ve never read George Eliot before (though now I’ve started Middlemarch and I’m quite enjoying it), and if you’ve never given her a try because of how long her works are, you really ought to check out this one as it’s only seventy pages long. Like many of her other books (or so the criticism informs me) the work is a bit didactic, trying to teach a moral, but the interjection of the paranormal–yes you read that correctly–makes the whole thing surreal and eerie. It’s disappointing that none of her other works deal with the paranormal, as I think she has a great command of the subject. A great book about selfishness, fate, and human nature with a wonderfully unreliable narrator.

Have you read George Eliot? What do you think of her? Let me know your thoughts and any book suggestions in the comments.