Overlapping Lives - Felix Holt, the Radical, etc

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Audible has many books "included" which means you can listen for free. So I have been on a little George Eliot kick (I am sure you know, but this was her pen name, her real name is Mary Anne). Silas Mariner was a good heart-warming shorter novel. The Lifted Veil was victorian horror (not really what you are thinking, but creepier than Frankenstien, though no monsters ... just human ones). And yesterday I completed a listen of Felix Holt, The Radical. 

I loved it. She is a deeply perceptive and wise author. Her plot is nearly as intricate as Dickens, though with less characters, and it feels more realistic, possible as if the events that converge were after all the ones bound to happen from the beginning. Which, of course, means they are not always as surprising as in Dickens, but it feels less of a magic show as they happen. 

This is also a very unique love story, one that contains elements of Austin (surprise inheritance, etc) but in the end Esther must choose between love or money; working people or nobility ... 

Felix, the character, is rich and amazingly written. George Eliot translated Feuerbach and Spinoza, and must have drawn from the action oriented materialism to create a new kind of saint. This reminded me of Turgenev, from his novel Fathers and Sons about the young nihilist. So I got curious of overlapping lives. I felt it was time to use my day job skills for a little creative history project. Here is my first version and I hope to keep adding dates and people and find a better way to squish them all together. You can see that Eliot and Turgenev (as well as Tolstoy, Lincoln and Douglass all overlap):



Ok, and randomly, I don't think with any connection to anything, I came across a young artist who has covered the entire Radiohead The Bends album. Check out Rosie Carney's version of Fake Plastic Trees and High and Dry.

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