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World Before Her (2009)

by Deborah Weisgall(Favorite Author)

3.15 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1299896626 (ISBN13: 9781299896628)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Mariner Books

review 1: Since I would read a matchbook cover if it was about either Venice or George Eliot, the combination won me immediately. The book, however, alternating chapters between Eliot's visit to Venice with her new icky husband John Cross, and that of an immature American artist with her Madoff-like spouse, is inconsistently written. Because Weisgall has done biographical research, she packs her Eliot chapters with a huge cast of characters (Herbert Spencer, John Chapman, Liszt, Clara Schumann) whose relationships with GE are too complex for the short narratives. She does however give her Eliot a deep need for love, thus explaining her marriage to Cross, whom she portrays as neurasthenic and homosexual. The other story is just silly, fantasizing about life as artist/pampered dar... moreling, etc., Weisgall appends a chick-lit tale to that of poor unsuspecting Mary Ann Evans. Then there's a bunch of Jewish stuff - when a woman named Weisgall (yes, her father was the composer) married to a man named Throop Wilder romanticizes all her Jewish characters (except of course for the brutal Madoff husband who has destroyed his roots) and Jewish life in the Venetian ghetto, I always think she had better decide to take up Judaism full-bore, or forget it.
review 2: Love in Venice: The City as Character & Catalyst - I was 'amused' to read reader reviews of this on Amazon which ALL seemed to focus on the character 'George Eliot' and completely MISSED/IGNORED the 'character' of Venice ... One CANNOT, just cannot read of Venice and not understand that it is not happenstance that the author would use this to place the story. Perhaps the readers have not been there - alas. less

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