MY LIFE IN MIDDLEMARCH

The wonderful Kate Reading is the ideal narrator for this quintessentially British audiobook. She’s a master of intonation and offers the most lovely of accents to enliven this unusual text. The book is part literary criticism, examining the George Eliot novel of the title with almost microscopic care. The audiobook is also part biography of Eliot, studying the influences that inspired the novel, and this memoir, as Mead draws parallels between her own life and her love of MIDDLEMARCH and its author. Yes, there’s a lot going on here, and, yes, it can become exhausting following it all for many hours of listening, but the premise is interesting and Reading’s performance makes it suitable for the audio format. L.B.F. 2015 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2014]