Apres le deluge

Friday night, when Eli was at an office party (yes, he does seem to attend an inordinate number of office parties), I finished The Mill on the Floss. It's a good thing he was gone, because I was bawling so much I scared Theo off the bed. An hour later, in the shower, I thought of the ending and sobbed again. Perhaps the pregnancy hormones were kicking in but, man, that George Elliot could yank a heart string. From reading Middlemarch, I wasn't expecting such a tragic ending. It was like reading Thomas Hardy.

Which reminds me of an ongoing debate with a friend, that one either likes Hardy or Trollope, but not both. Perhaps when I am breast-feeding I can polish off a few Trollope novels and reassess him but, from my very limited reading so far, he seems a bit superficial. But so many people I like like him, so I feel I owe him a second date. And he will be a cheap date, as his copyright has run out.

Just started In the Line of Beauty, last year's Booker prize winner. (That's Man Booker to you!) I love a book about the Thatcher era. And I need to read the last few short stories in the New Yorker: one by Aleksander Hemon, with whom I canvassed for Greenpeace over a dozen years ago, and the other by Umberto Ecco, which Tony highly recommends.