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If I had never bought the kindle, I never would have thought to read Middlemarch, and I would have missed out on a truly majestic work. But because it was on the list of the 100 best books of all time and it was free, I transferred it to my kindle for a rainy day. I didn’t know anything about the book, but I liked the sound of the name. I started reading and I was instantly hooked. It wasn’t until about half way through that I learned that George Eliot was the psydonym of Mary Anne Evans, changing the voice I heard in my head from male to female. Written in 1871, nearly 140 years ago, the characters were vivid and fascinating. This book is set in the ficticious town of Middlemarch in England, and follows a dozen people through their lives from 1830 onwards. The prose was a pure delight, and it was so easy to highlight my favourite passages on the kindle without damaging her words.

When a modest and religious young woman fell in love with a man she did not know: “She filled up all blanks with unmanifested perfections, interpreting him as she interpreted the works of Providence, and accounting for seeming discords by her own deafness to the higher harmonies.”

One man’s opinion of a woman who asked too many questions: “She is a good creature—­that fine girl—­but a little too earnest,” he thought. “It is troublesome to talk to such women. They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question”

On the scientist and his method of “combining and constructing with the clearest eye for probabilities and the fullest obedience to knowledge; and then, in yet more energetic alliance with impartial Nature, standing aloof to invent tests by which to try its own work.”

On joy versus misery: “It is of no use to try and take care of all the world; that is being taken care of when you feel delight—­ in art or in anything else. Would you turn all the youth of the world into a tragic chorus, wailing and moralizing over misery? I suspect that you have some false belief in the virtues of misery, and want to make your life a martyrdom.”

On arguments between spouses: “There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.”

On enduring difficulties: “Oh, my dear, when you have a clergyman in your family you must accommodate your tastes: I did that very early. When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn’t have the end without them.”

On how to chastise a dog for misbehaving: She took his fore-paws in one hand, and lifted up the forefinger of the other, while the dog wrinkled his brows and looked embarrassed. “Fly, Fly, I am ashamed of you,” Mary was saying in a grave contralto. “This is not becoming in a sensible dog; anybody would think you were a silly young gentleman.”

On choosing a husband: “No, indeed. I don’t love him because he is a fine match.” “What for, then?” “Oh, dear, because I have always loved him. I should never like scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in a husband.”

My working week became a little bit brighter with a gift from my Secret Santa from the intertubes. Even though my Secret Santa posted this box to me in November from Canada, it only just arrived on my doorstep. It was lovely to find all these tokens from Quebec, especially as Montreal it was a candidate for our new home back in 2008. The package contained many regional bookmarks, a lovely card from Santa, as well as The Shadow of the Wind, Flashman, and a local cookbook with lots of interesting family recipes. Furthermore, some delicious maple sugar, coffee candy, and hot chocolate mix to keep me company when I am curled up with these new novels.

I started Flashman on my metro trip to work this morning, and by 29 pages in I agree with his self-assessment that he is “a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and oh yes, a toady.” I am looking forward to learning about military history from a very interesting perspective, as well as introducing some French-Canadian influences into my Australian-Belgian cooking repertoire.

Thank-you Santa, for sending me some exceptional literary and culinary delights.

This book is written from the perspective of nine-year old Bruno, who has moved with his family from Berlin to somewhere out in the country called “Out-With”. His father is a soldier with a very important job, but Bruno doesn’t like the new house. It only has three stories, and he has no friends to play with. One day he goes exploring, and finds a boy sitting on the other side of a very tall fence. The boy is wearing striped pyjamas, and his name is Shmuel. This is the story of the friendship that develops between Bruno and Shmuel. It is a very simple yet powerful book, similar in some ways to the movie “Life is Beautiful”.

“Who are all those people outside?”

Father tilted his head to the left, looking a little confused by the question. “Soldiers, Bruno, ” he said. “And secretaries. Staff workers. You’ve seen them all before, of course.”

“No, not them,” said Bruno. “The people I see from my window. In the huts, in the distance. They’re all dressed the same.”

“Ah, those people,” said Father, nodding his head and smiling slightly. “Those people… well, they’re not really people at all, Bruno.”

Charles Marden makes a journey from Vancouver Island to Belgium, tracing a physical path that is similar to my own. His story, though, is one of looking backwards for answers, rather than forwards for adventure. It is 1918, and Marden has just received a letter telling him that his son was killed in Belgium. In order to try to make sense of this tragedy, he travels to Belgium to find the last place where his son stood alive.

Marden is numb and unable to comprehend the personal and global tragedies of the war, his loss so great it was impossible for me to grasp. What really shook me were the descriptions of Belgium after just after the war. I have visited these cities, now so carefully reconstructed, and it is so difficult for me to imagine them destroyed. For me, these are sunlit towns filled with happy memories, so to read of their annihilation was like learning of the abusive childhood of a dear friend.

It was like having heard of heaven and hell, and finding out, in one revelatory moment, that this is what they consisted of – not magic zones of fire, not fleecy zones of clouds, but a vaguely undulating series of muddy fields that looked like a lumpy pudding.
“Voila“, Conner said, smiling ironically. “The Western Front”.
…
Back on the island he had has a friend named Andre Slater who had a farm and grew potatoes. It wasn’t a particularly big farm, not by western standards, and yet the battlefield he stared at could have fit inside with room to spare. In the end, it was this comparison that defeated him – thinking how many boys had tried trying to cross Andre Slater’s farm.

Photo from JaaQ