Classics you couldn't finish

[Tambatamba]

For me, Dracula. As compelling as it was, I had to stop reading it because I found it so sad and depressing.

Villette is the best novel of all time!

Ok, of the 19thc in English.

Anyone who thinks it inferior to Jane Eyre immediately forfeits my respect.

I think the fascinating thing is how three such different talents emerged out of the same childhood experiences/immersion in the same obsessive childhood worldbuilding, story-spinning games (that all three were still playing well into adulthood). Anne is more of a social realist and protest novelist, Emily is a Gothic novelist who’s not that interested in character in the traditional sense, Charlotte is a romantic feminist who writes brilliantly well about suppressed passion and rage.

I still always desperately want to know what all three would have written had they lived longer, and used to dream in my teens of finding Emily’s lost second novel, possibly destroyed either by her before her death or Charlotte afterwards. Maybe Anne’s later writings are hardest to predict. I think if she’d become as famous as Charlotte, she might have written brilliantly about the very new world she would have entered into.

Oh, and I only recently saw the Brontë film To Walk Invisible, which I thought was brilliantly cast, especially Finn Atkinson as Charlotte and Chloe Pirrie as Emily.

1984

Villette is the best novel of all time!

Except for the most bloody annoying and unsatisfactory ending(s) of all time. I slightly wish I hadn't finished it!

Not sure if it's a classic as such, but Wolf Hall. I have tried and tried and tried. Everything about it says that it should be right up my street but I can't do it

When WH was first published I defended it and the use of 'he' on Amazon to the point I was asked if I was actually Hilary Mantel 😆When I finished it for the first ime I have the unnerving sensation for a minute or two that I was in Cromwell's head and immediately started reading it again.

The Mirror and the Light, OTOH, was much longer than it needed to be. My theory is that HM didn't want to write the ending she and the rest of us knew was coming.

my English teacher listened to me slagging off Fanny Price and then asked me why I had so little compassion for an abused child - brought me up short

That has immediately explained to me Fanny's behaviour - her shyness, lack of confidence and her acceptance of how her cousins and aunt treat her.

Least talented . . .

"used to dream in my teens of finding Emily’s lost second novel, possibly destroyed either by her before her death or >> Charlotte << afterwards"

Least talented of three of the most talented writers of all time! And she died first, so had less chance to prove herself.

I've tried and failed to read Middlemarch but the adaptation was wonderful.

Villette is the best Charlotte Brontë novel of all time!
FTFY

@EmilyBrontesGhost you are cracking me up! Mr Mybug clearly not on MN to champion Bramwell I see.

Someone should put out an edition of Daniel Deronda with the Daniel bits cut out, entitled 'Gwendolen Harleth' -- that would be a contender for best Eliot novel.

I think someone did something like that. And the result was absolutely terrible.

Daniel Deronda is absolutely my favourite novel. And I don't think at all that the 'Daniel Deronda' bits are an intrusion on a novel about Gwendolen. I think that they elaborate on, and provide a wider cultural context for, the 'saviour' or messiah role that she has created for him in her life.
I haven't read any commentary on the book, but I think this strange kind of saviour role that Daniel has for Gwendolen is absolutely about Gwendolen not about Daniel. Her 'redemption' via him is absolutely her own work, and his life outside his relationship with her magnifies the reader's understanding of his passivity and Gwendolen's authorship of her own life
I think Eliot was reflecting on religion, on the notion of coming to self-knowledge via the reflective medium of a god or messiah, and Daniel is a proxy for religion in the story. Calling the book 'Daniel Deronda' instead of 'Gwendoln Harleth' feels a bit like a nod to the contemporary Feuerbachian critique of religion -- the claim that when we talk about God we are actually talking about ourselves, projecting onto another entity the drama of our own self-realisation

Gwendolen knows nothing much about Daniel. She projects massively, using him as a kind of canvas on which to try and paint her own redemption. In that respect he is a bit like the more modern figure of a psychoanalyist, who helps a patient to reach self-knowledge via the much-vaunted 'transference', and I often wonder what Eliot would have thought about psychoanalysis.

He is her tool, a catalyst, and the 'Daniel Deronda' bits of the story seem to reflect on what it is to be trapped in this role of being a device for other people's redemption. (I haven't read it for decades, but I do seem to remember that all the confining circumstances of history and destiny kind of trap him into taking a certain direction, like Christ being funnelled by his own destiny into the passivity of suffering and death.)

It was probably partly that, but you often see that - as authors get more celebrated and become big earners for a publisher - it's hard for editors to insist on changes. If the Mirror and the Light had been by a less successful writer, it would have been better edited, and a better book as a result.

Having said that, Mantel's writing of Cromwell's actual execution is superb - transcendent.

One of my favourite books but you’ve got to skip all the bits where he’s chuntering on about architecture

THE ARCHITECTURE!!!! The book would've been so much better without all the obsessive descriptions!

Ha I came on to say Dracula too !

I'll take the architecture in Notre Dame de Paris over the long and detailed description of the Paris sewers in Les Miserables. I can still smell them just by thinking about it. (I loved both books, Penguin Classics translation, and read them lots of times.)

A classics thread always takes a sideways lurch into ‘who was the best Brontë’ - I’m totally here for it.

I do love Wuthering Heights, but I sometimes really prefer a novel where everyone is heinous in their own way. My favourite character to hate on is Nellie Dean, such a shit stirring gossip. I think it’s an incredible piece of work to come from such a young mind and it doesn’t have all the ancillary plots of other bigger classics.

That said, I do also enjoy Jane Eyre and amongst my reading friends we often ask ourselves ‘what would Jane do when faced with a moral dilemma and find ourselves hilarious as we wonder if we need to trudge across moorland on principle. We are morons!

I love and have enjoyed most of the books listed here, especially Tolstoy and Hardy. I think Adam Bede is one of the most accomplished books ever.

I have read Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol and have tried to join the read alongs here but Dickens just doesn’t work for me. Oh, I also read about 80% of The Old Curiosity Shop and decided I didn’t really care.

Vanity fair. Tried 3 times... I have absolutely no sympathy for any of the characters and decided not to waste anymore of my life on them.

Love that film

lolol, @StColumbofNavron, at the 'who was the best Bronte' question being the default landing place for all classics threads. Aside from Wuthering Heights I've only read Charlotte, but I'm going to take a punt on her being Top Bronte because flipping blimey Jane Eyre and Villette are soooo good.
Further lol at 'trudging across moorland on principal'.

Midnight's Children, I've tried 5 times I think and I just can't.

Also 100 Years of Solitude.

I read On the Road, but hated it, what a load of egotistical shite.

I loved Wolf Hall and the subsequent books, it was so refreshing. I had read too many Philippa Gregory just before WH came out and it was shockingly good in comparison.

I love NDDP so much and yet I’ve never managed to make it even a tenth of the way into Les Mis.

i got about halfway through Toilers of the Sea and liked it and yet even at the time I don’t think I was entirely sure what was going on. I’d have to start from the beginning now if I tried to finish it.

i also started Wuthering Heights, got about a third in and was enjoying it (I hadn’t realised that there’s some humour in it too) but I keep forgetting to finish it so must pick that back up, this thread has reminded me