I've been a big reader of non-fiction, but my experience with literature is not much more outside of classics that I read in high school. My friend, who got her masters in Comparative Literature, recommended Middlemarch to me and said it was one of the best books of all time.
I read about 300 pages of it over the past month. I think I'm on chapter 28 or something like that. I definitely like it. If I didn't, my pea-sized attention span would've have gotten that far. But so far, it hasn't wholly enveloped me or absorbed me emotionally. I can't say I love it, at least yet.
From a technical standpoint, Eliot's writing is probably the best that I've read. She's very intricate and poetic. But, an average novel's worth of pages in, I haven't had an emotional hook sink into me yet.
Part of me thinks the book has done a great job at setting up a wide web of complex characters with conflicting interests. There's definitely potential for this novel to do explosive things. But part of me also thinks that if I didn't "get it" now, I may never get it.
For those who have finished it, without spoiling it, would you say that there's a big game-changer coming up in the middle of the novel that will suddenly sink me into the story and characters, or should I cut my losses?