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    Silas Marner
    Silas Marner
    Silas Marner
    Audiobook8 hours

    Silas Marner

    Written by George Eliot

    Narrated by Anna Bentinck

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    About this audiobook

    Here is a tale straight from the fireside. We are compelled to follow the humble and mysterious figure of the linen weaver Silas Marner, on his journey from solitude and exile to the warmth and joy of family life. His path is a strange one; when he loses his hoard of hard-earned coins all seems to be lost, but in place of the golden guineas come the golden curls of a child ? and from desolate misery comes triumphant joy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateApr 30, 2014
    ISBN9781843798125
    Author

    George Eliot

    George Eliot (1819-80) was born Mary Ann Evans into the family of a Warwickshire land agent and did not escape provincial life until she was 30. But she was brilliantly self-educated and able at once to shine in London literary circles. It was, however, her novels of English rural life that brought her fame, starting with Adam Bede, published under her new pen name in 1859, and reaching a zenith with Middlemarch in 1871. Eliot was a devoutly moral woman but lived for 25 years with a man who already had a wife. It is indicative of the respect and love that she inspired in her most devoted readers that Queen Victoria was one of them.

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    Reviews for Silas Marner

    4/5

    1,907 ratings81 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I love this book about a bitter man finding his happiness in a golden haired child rather than his gold.
    • 3/5
      The beginning is boring but the story kinda picks up
    • 5/5
      Reminiscent of the beauty of Jane eyre, I love the plot twists and the great redemption of Sylas
    • 3/5
      A story of redemption. Eliot teaches a simple lesson: When we let go of the goods we get the gold. Simplistic but real. Love is the answer.
    • 5/5
      Great read after living life a bit and understanding the meaning of self and imposed isolation...
    • 3/5
      good story - a little slow and not as good as austen, but gives a good sense of the historical. story of a man who has his gold stolen and then finds a little girl and changes his life.
    • 3/5
      I am reading this book for my literature class , it isn’t what I am used to reading so it was hard for me to read , I highly recommend the audio book which is way more enjoyable than the book .
      The narrator did a great job .
    • 5/5
      One of the best books I've ever read. Eliot has a great insight into the human mind. Very touching.
    • 4/5
      One of the only books I read for school that I actually liked.
    • 4/5
      A book you haven’t read since high school is on the list for the 2016 Reading Challenge.Synopsis: A young weaver, Silas Marner, is betrayed by his best friend and subsequently leaves his home to find a place to live near a small village. Although he is prosperous, he exists as a poverty stricken hermit with no real friends. One night he is robbed and although this puts him in a more sympathetic light with the townspeople, he goes into a deep depression. During one of catatonic episodes, a two year old girl toddles into his home and changes his life for the better. The mystery of her parentage and of the disappearance on Marner's money are eventually solved.Review: There are huge portions of this story that I'd forgotten since the days in Betty Swyers's classroom. Although the language of the 1800s tends toward verbosity, Silas Marner is much less dense that Middlemarch, one of Eliot's other books. The 'truth will out' and the relentless progression of time are two of the main themes of the story, although unlike many writers in this same time period, the happy ending adds a touch of pleasant finality to Eliot's tale.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely beautiful story..and the narrator was great. I Loved it
    • 5/5
      Set in the early 19th century, Eliot's narrative accurately features the lifestyle, values and traditions of the period. Ethics, religion and the industrial revolution all play a part in this beautiful story. I realize it is not to everyone's taste but I find the old-fashioned language is a delight, describing the actions and feelings of the characters so beautifully.
    • 2/5
      Combines wordiness with sappiness.
    • 5/5
      beautifully written
    • 3/5
      This was a required reading book for one of my High School English classes. I was just reminded of it by a friend who read it recently. Unfortunately, I struggle to remember much about it beyond remembering that we discussed that George Eliot was a pen name.
    • 5/5
      George Eliot does it again for me at least. Having read three of her novels now, I feel like she masters the art of a novel. I wouldn't say this was my favorite of hers, but I liked it a lot and Silas Marner was a great character. If you want to start reading Eliot I suggest you start with this book first (although I started with Middlemarch). This is her shortest novel just under 200 pages while her other novels run over 500 pages. I also like the fact this a story written by a woman about an older man when woman didn't write about male characters at her time. If you are looking for a well written heart warming story for a quick read I recommend this book (it does have it's depressing parts, but the ending makes up for that).
    • 4/5
      A nice little story with a simple plot and a sweet transformation. Paints the characters and the village beautifully.
    • 5/5
      George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans 1819-1880) wrote Silas Marner as her version of Pilgrim’s Progress. Like Bunyan’s masterpiece, Silas Marner also has the feel of a universal fable, the redemption of a man from desolation to love and riches.Unlike Progress, however, the characters in Silas Marner are well-drawn and invite sympathy. Knowing how shabbily Silas has been treated and knowing the inner journey of Silas and the nasty young Squire, makes the reader care about the characters. Eppie, the toddler who appears in Silas’ life after his precious gold has been taken, is less believable as an individual. She is beautiful in body and soul, humble in aspiration and devoted to Silas. But she is lovely because she is so deeply loved by Silas, her ‘Papa’. The inner journey Silas makes is not like the ‘ascent’ of Pilgrim to the river and the City of Heaven. Nor is it in the tradition of the ‘ascent’ to God mapped by medieval mystics like Bonaventure and Richard of Saint Victor.Silas’ journey to redemption stays in the gritty reality of Victorian poverty. Grace – in the form of the toddler he names Hephzibah (Eppie) – comes to Silas once and all at once. The name Hephzibah means ‘My delight is in her’, and it is used in the Hebrew Scriptures as the symbolic name for the restored Jerusalem (Isaiah 62:4). The redemption takes the miser, Silas, with his short-sight and propensity to fitting, and teaches him how to love deeply. Eliot contrasts the emotional and spiritual poverty of his former state with the richness of loving and being loved: the gold is even returned to Silas and secrets, liberating once shared, are brought to light. Names are important to Eliot: Silas is named for the companion of the Apostle Paul. The New Testament’s Silas and Paul are put in prison and God releases them. God also releases Silas Marner from the darkness of the cultish Lantern Yard and from his self-imposed prison and. Both the New Testament and the village of Raveloe rejoice greatly at Silas’ release. Is the name ‘Marner’ a reference to Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner published 90 years earlier? Silas Marner is my introduction to George Eliot. I found the novel charming and satisfying. There is a central goodness in the novel which will be evident to readers whether or not they are Christian believers. But it is ultimately a Christian novel, an exploration of the journey we all in our own ways make in Christ.
    • 4/5
      Exiled from his hometown after being wrongfully accused of stealing, Silas Marner settles in a new community as a hermit-like weaver, a social outsider, who grows increasingly obsessed with his small and hard-earned stash of gold. When this treasure is stolen from him, Silas sinks into an utter despair, until one day, when the small child of an opium addict toddles into his life and transforms him with her love into a Real Boy, essentially, I suppose. Running parallel to Marner's tale is the story of the local squire, a wholly unlikeable rich kid type, whose own relationship to the child eventually threatens a third kind of ruin to Marner's life.While I am generally all for a nice Family Don't End with Blood, feel-good story, this one fell pretty flat for me. The characters weren't very fleshed out and the writing didn't wow me, either. *shrug*
    • 4/5
      At first, I thought this was slow and a bit boring but as I kept reading, I grew to like Silas more, loved Eppie, and by the end, I thought it was such a sweet story. I was reading 2 other classic books when I started reading this and after a while, this was the one I wanted to read last because I wanted to end with the best. While Silas was the main character, he shared space with many others and they were as interesting by the end as well. This was my first George Eliot book and it won't be my last.
    • 3/5
      So much of the middle is adjacent to the main character's story that I started to wonder why this was called "Silas Marner" and not "The Cass Family". And the latter's story was quite tedious. It doesn't help that the writing while well-done in one sense is way overwritten. I recall several pages where each was composed of an unbroken block of text. And, for a book almost as short as a novella, it felt at least three times its length. I liked Silas's arc, though, even if it was overshadowed.
    • 2/5
      A hundred years later, still an assigned reading in many high schools. This copy has the names of students of "M. H. S." in 1923 and 1925.: Mary Elizabeth Blew and Surer Colson, who were juniors in 1925 and 1923, respectively.
    • 4/5
      Silas Marner is a strong and lovely little tale, with a blessed departure from all the tedious and repetitive society conversationsand obsessions which overruled the intriguing characters and stories of both MIDDLEMARCH and The Mill on the Floss.A happy ending was totally unexpected and welcome.
    • 3/5
      Digital audiobook read by Nadia MaySilas Marner is a weaver who was banished from his small religious community on a false charge of theft. He moves to the village of Ravensloe, where he leads a reclusive, miserly life as the town’s weaver. His gold is stolen from him, however, reinforcing his belief that everything is against him. Until … returning home on a snowy evening he finds a baby girl asleep at his hearth. Her mother has died in the snow, and Silas adopts the child, believing that his gold has somehow been symbolically returned in the form of this delightful little girl.A classic tale of the redemptive power of love, first published in 1861. As is typical of the novels of the era, the plot includes numerous coincidences that stretch this reader’s tolerance. There is much misery, but Eliot does give us a few moments of joy, and an ending full of hope. I did think Eliot was somewhat heavy-handed in relaying her message, however. I know this was assigned reading when I was in high school, and I’m sure I relied on the Cliff’s Notes. Reading now, I’m reminded of the writing style of Charles Dickens. Eliot was born Mary Ann Evans and converted to Evangelicalism while still in school. She later disavowed it, but those roots are clear in this tale. In private, however, she became estranged from her family when she moved to London as a single woman. There she met George Henry Lewes, and lived with him for some twenty years, despite the fact that he was already married. He encouraged her to write and publish. She was somewhat notorious for this open relationship and felt no one would read her novels, so adopted the pseudonym of George Eliot. Nadia May does a fine job performing the audiobook. However, I did have trouble staying focused. That isn’t her fault, it’s simply the prevalent style of writing of the mid-19th century.
    • 3/5
      Dickenesque plot, lots of sentiment and melodrama. It contained a lot of social commentary that made it preachy and outdated. More relevant as a historical document; though I would think that the author's class background would make her "insights" into working class values and mores less valid.
    • 3/5
      Re-read 9/20/17. Still meh. Reads more like a church parable than a story with interesting characters. Compelling to read but unsatisfying in the end. One too many bows put on the mysteries. Maybe I should give it two stars instead of three.
    • 4/5
      Silas Marner by George Eliot was originally published in 1861 and I think this book has withstood the march of time remarkably. Silas Marner is a weaver who comes to the village of Raveloe as an outsider never quite fitting in. He spends much of his time alone with his only comfort being the gold that he has saved and now hoards. When his money is stolen he is left anxious and confused. But he rescues an orphan child whose mother perished in a snowbank, and, with the help of the villagers he raises this child with care and love. Eppie, the child grows into a beautiful young woman but when the local quarry’s water levels go down, a body is revealed and alongside the body is Silas’ gold. This body is that of the local squire’s never-do-well brother who not only stole the gold but was also blackmailing his older brother who had entered into a marriage with a barmaid. The woman who perished in the snowbank was that lower class wife and the squire has known that Eppie is his daughter all this time. When he finally reveals this to his wife and they decide to claim Eppie for their own, they realize that they have left it too late as Eppie will have no parent but Silas.With his gold restored to him, and Eppie entering into a happy marriage, the book ends with Silas realizing that money is best used to improve life rather to to be hoarded and worshipped. While the squire sadly realizes that he has lost his chance at fatherhood by ignoring his daughter when she needed him. Overall an interesting morality tale that I thoroughly enjoyed. I read this book through installments from Daily Lit and the story certainly held my attention through all 70 segments.
    • 4/5
      Classic 1861 novel about a socially outcast weaver who adopts a child, and the country squire's son who keeps her true parentage secret. Like many novels of this time period, it's pretty wordy for the amount of actual story, but it's a pleasant read, with a warm message about what really makes a family. And George Eliot's writing displays a very keen eye for the details of human nature.
    • 4/5
      It took me a little bit of time - and concentration - to settle into the story. I found Eliot's writing style to be a wordy and probably better suited for reading than listening to (especially if you are like me and tend to multi-task while listening to an audiobook!) Silas Marner is one of those classic tales that runs the gamit of tangible loss, disenfranchisement with society and seclusion of sorts until fate one day gently opens the door and presents a possible path towards a new beginning: A life of redemption and the re-discovery of what it means to love (and we don't mean a continuation of love of worldly possessions!) Eliot does a fantastic job playing sociologist, presenting 19th century England with its class structure (via the squire), rural/ small village life and the ever present role of religion and 'village values' in guiding the population through life. For me, the first 1/3 of the book was pretty much 'ho-hum'. The story started to make its mark on me during the Christmas festivities and that was when I settled in and really was able to enjoy this story for the tale it is.
    • 4/5
      required reading in middle school. Pretty sentimental tale of a miser and his redemptive love of a child.