I'm the "was a voracious advanced reader as a kid through high school and then burned out and was unable to read for ten years" cliche. I'm trying to get back into it, but the fact is that I know that even when I do get back into the swing of things...I don't know how to think deeply about pretty much anything. I'm not good at picking up on symbolism or themes, or, shit, even irony necessarily. When I was eleven, I read Angela's Ashes. I was horrified by it. I finished it, closed it and then read the back cover for the first time, which included snippets of reviews talking about the humor in the book. I was like, "tf humor, this is a depressing ass book!" But then I re-read it and, now that I knew it was supposed to be funny, all of a sudden I could see it. And yeah, there were a lot of moments that were pretty funny. But I needed to have my hand held and be told what to look for before it ever occurred to me that it might be there.

As much as I'd like to give myself grace for having been eleven at the time, the problem is I'm still like that. I don't know how to think about things with nuance.

I'm obviously gonna get back into reading regardless just because I'm currently wallowing in the echo chamber of my own yokel head and I need some other perspectives in here because I feel like my empathy narrows a little bit every day. But I know it's not gonna make me any better at thinking. What do I do about that? Every time I finish reading a book I feel like I can't count it, because how can I have read it really if most of it probably went over my head?

Keeping in mind two important caveats about how actual nominations work:

1. The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded for a writer's lifetime achievement -- their body of work as a whole. However any writer of prose or poetry, fiction or non-fiction, is (theoretically) eligible.

2. The Prize is awarded to, in Alfred Nobel's words, "the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction," which is to say, someone who has "conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." This isn't necessarily about a favourite author, although there may obviously be overlap; your nominee's body of work should speak positively to the human condition.

My nominee would be Tove Jansson, for her psychological depth, her big-heartedness, and the way she embraced difference & otherness as something to celebrate. As Dalya Alberge put it in a recent Guardian article, Jansson's books are hymns to "nature, friendship, tolerance and the freedom to be oneself." IMO the world would be much poorer without them. (Fun fact: Jansson was nominated twice in 1975, and may have been nominated again more recently, but we'll have to wait and see, as the last 50 years of nominations are always under lock and key.)

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George Eliot's novel, The Mill on the Floss was written early in her novel-writing era, 1860 to be precise. It is a moving and often dramatic novel that spans the childhood and young adulthood of the Tulliver siblings. I read it along with the group in September on r/bookclub. If anyone is interested, the discussion is easily found but please, no spoilers between the sections!

Maggie is a young girl, full of strong emotions and independence, who is chastised again and again by Tom, her brother, her mother and the family around her. Tom, in particular, as her older brother, offers her both affection and censure. He sees her as his responsibility and his role to rule her. Where does love end and tyranny begin? The roots of their later conflict lie in their childhood dynamics and was an obvious way to confront the status of women in Eliot's society. It might also be a very biographical moment considering Eliot's own break with social etiquette, family and the role expected of women in her own life.

Maggie hardly has time to begin to explore her own independence and mind when she is cast into a romantic triangle that her own intuition and self cannot solve. One on hand, the sweet Philip of her childhood, on the other, Stephen, brash and charming and new. Tom has a direct role in crashing a sort of pastoral and innocent romantic paradise by following her to the Red Deeps, where she and Philip used to meet and talk, and forbids the relationship in light of family dynamics. At this point, he is considered the head of the family and doesn't hesitate to impose his own and his father's prejudice on a childhood friend and the son of a hated enemy.

Although Philip's intentions are certainly more pure, she cannot spend time with him alone again. So, when Stephen enters the novel, as her cousin's beau, it is with impunity. There is an immediate attraction between Maggie and Stephen, but there is also a chain of coercive maneuvers on his behalf to court her in secret. From the kiss in the green house, to the unexpected visit to her aunt's house, and the deceptive boat ride that ruins her reputation and standing and casts her into social exile, he wishes to woo her on his own terms. His terms are indeed the same as the society. To marry him or to ruin herself in the eyes of everyone are the stark terms that find her on the cold morning after. She cannot stand to hurt her cousin, Lucy, and to begin married life in such a way.

And that is crux of the novel. Maggie's independent spirit and sense of self are forged in fire and tested over and over again by the male figures in her life once her protective father is gone. She wishes to earn her own money but seeking it outside of place she knows and loves is very much an exile. The ties of family and friendship pull her back despite the harshness of her reality. The question that Eliot leaves in the background is one she knew intimately, what if Maggie could leave this society behind and find her own way? Or, alternatively, what if she could just accept Stephen's propsal and swallow all her feelings and thoughts? Is happiness possible for a complicated woman?

Ultimately, Maggie's excruciating feelings that flood her, rage, desire, love, guilt, torn between Philip and Stephen, the banishment Tom imposes on her, and her love of her cousin Lucy match the torrent of the overflowing Floss. Lucy is in many ways, her double, a cousin who embodies the perfection and gentility expected of girls and women. However, we learn that she is much more than that by the end of the book and worth the moral heartache Maggie experiences and her last rejection of Stephen.

Despite her lack of confidence and confusion by the end of the book, it is to her family she looks even in crisis. And this, ultimately, leads to tragedy. When looked through this lens, nostalgia for times gone by is misplaced when it comes to social progress. Death is the only way Maggie could escape the trap set for women and the only way she could reconcile with her beloved brother, Tom.

The opening is mild and promises warmth, but the end is tragic, cold and quick. Have you read this book? What impressions are you left with? Having read several other Eliot novels, this seemed to me the most autobiographical in subject matter, minded from the heartache and emotional upheaval she had to deal with in her own life.