Smith's vivid exploration of the mind of author George Eliot, given name Marian Evans, and her late-in-life marriage to John Walter Cross raises the bar for historical fiction. Yes, Smith credits the works of Eliot herself and a score of other sources for background information, but such research can only go so far. With that extensive investigation as a springboard, she nosedives into Eliot's nineteenth-century life just as the 60-year-old Marian and 40-year-old John begin their honeymoon… Eliot fans will certainly inhale every page, but any historical-fiction readers will thoroughly relish Smith's tale of a remarkable woman and an unlikely Victorian love.
[This] appealing fictionalized biography of the revered British novelist George Eliot imagines the inner impulses and passions hidden under a cloak of 19th-century propriety… Smith's portrait of the author is nicely detailed, effectively locating her in time, place, and society.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Smith’s portrait of Eliot’s honeymoon with Cross ... plausibly brings to life a puzzling period of her life. With the historical record lacking or shrouded, it is the perfect example of when fictional storytelling about an eminent person is warranted.” —The Washington Post
“Smith’s enchanting account humanizes a figure renowned as much for her refutation of conventional female stereotypes and social limitations as for her genius for story and language. Eliot’s personal life is reflected here as a series of deep insecurities regarding her appeal to men and the contributions her partners made to her work — “Felix Holt,” “Middlemarch,” “Daniel Deronda” — novels that endure as some of the most formative texts in English literature.” —The New York Times Book Review
"Smith’s vivid exploration of the mind of author George Eliot, given name Marian Evans, and her late-in-life marriage to John Walter Cross raises the bar for historical fiction…Eliot fans will certainly inhale every page, but any historical-fiction readers will thoroughly relish Smith’s tale of a remarkable woman and an unlikely Victorian love." —Booklist (STARRED REVIEW)
“A mesmerizing reimagination of George Eliot’s accursed marriage.” —Vanity Fair
“A deep dive into love’s turbulent waters, and into the mysterious heart of a person we thought we knew best.” – Vogue
“…Smith…does well with invented incidents, such as a gondolier’s aggressive sexual interest in Cross, and encounters with Dickens, Darwin, and the pioneering women’s-rights activist Barbara Bodichon, with whom Eliot had a loyal friendship.” —The New Yorker
“Smith has admirably fleshed out her subject, and her take should be welcomed by anyone interested in the life of this great writer—and in historical fiction generally.” – Library Journal
“The intelligent and gripping tale weaves historical truths with the author’s imagining of Eliot’s inner voice in this enchanting look at her honeymoon in 1880 Venice.” – The National Examiner
“One of the greatest challenges of fiction is to dare to step inside a great figure of the past, to relive their experiences, but also to fill in the gaps, to recreate their inner voice. Dinitia Smith sets out to do just this, and succeeds brilliantly, in her latest novel, The Honeymoon” —Historical Novels Review
“Regardless, Smith’s novel resolves Virginia Woolf’s observation that “to read George Eliot attentively is to become aware how little one knows about her.” The Honeymoon is nothing less than a séance: through the alchemy of biographical precision and fictional speculations, Smith conjures for readers a vivid, sensual, and endearing account of George Eliot’s life.” —Necessary Fiction
“If you never read George Eliot because you were slightly intimidated, The Honeymoon will reassure you. And if you’re already a fan of Middlemarch, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Daniel Deronda, then this book will fill your imagination like a new friend you can’t believe you’ve lived so many years without. Smith’s George Eliot is brilliant and bold—as you know she is—but Smith is equally daring and no less incisive. She is as worthy a successor to so formidable a writer as is Colm Tóibín to Henry James.” —André Aciman, author of Out of Egypt: A Memoir
“In this affecting novel, Dinitia Smith brings a biographer’s diligence and a novelist’s imagination to bear upon the life of George Eliot. Smith hews closely to the factual contours of Eliot’s last months—in particular, her marriage to a man twenty years her junior—while making provocative, speculative leaps into the mind and heart of the Victorian author. In so doing, Smith finds a way to consider some of the same questions that preoccupied Eliot in her own masterful fictions: What is the meaning and purpose of marriage? What are the challenges of imagining our way into the experience of those around us? And how might we—even with the best intentions in the world—fail in our comprehension of those closest to us?” —Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in Middlemarch
“The brilliant George Eliot was one of the most fascinating women in history. Dinitia Smith sets the scene for her dramatic last act with depth and style.” —Brooke Allen, critic and author
"The Honeymoon" explores different kinds of love, and of the possibilities of redemption and happiness even in an imperfect union. Smith integrates historical truth with her own rich rendition of Eliot's inner voice, crafting a page-turner that is as intelligent as it is gripping.” —The Book Table
“The Honeymoon is one of those novels that seems to unfold without words, perfectly imagined, like a dream. It’s an eloquent story about George Eliot’s late marriage to a much younger man; but this only touches the surface. Dinitia Smith digs into the interior life of genius here — exploring the greatest English novelist of the Victorian period. She brings that fine mind, and this astonishing age, to pulsing life. I love the pace of the narrative, the deep feeling that dwells here, deepening at every turn. This is wonderful fiction, taking us into the interior of human consciousness itself, into the heart of creation.” —Jay Parini, author of The Last Station
05/15/2016
George Eliot (née Marian Evans), whose Middlemarch is considered by many to be the best novel ever written, is the subject of this new title from Smith (The Illusionist). Though fiction, it reads much like biography. Smith takes as her point of departure the Venice honeymoon of the renowned writer, who was 60 years old at the time of her marriage to John Walter Cross, 20 years her junior. Evans apparently desired no physical relationship, and Cross proposed: "We can be…lovers in our hearts and minds, but not the other way." The author recounts the disastrous honeymoon—Cross has a breakdown and jumps from a balcony into a canal—with numerous flashbacks to her subject's earlier life, including her happy "marriage" to George Lewes (he and Evans never married but lived together as husband and wife). Smith movingly portrays Evans's intellectual and emotional growth as a woman far ahead of her time and draws on significant events in her life to trace the origin and development of her major writings. VERDICT Smith has admirably fleshed out her subject, and her take should be welcomed by anyone interested in the life of this great writer—and in historical fiction generally.—Edward Cone, New York
2016-02-18
An appealing fictionalized biography of the revered British novelist George Eliot imagines the inner impulses and passions hidden under a cloak of 19th-century propriety. Voted the greatest British novel of all time in a poll of international book critics in 2015, Middlemarch was the crowning achievement of the Victorian writer whose real name was Marian Evans but who took the pen name of George Eliot to dodge gender assumptions. A sensitive child with a loving father, a faded mother, and several siblings, Evans grew up lonely, blessed with a notable intelligence but few physical charms. Her intellect drew her to the world of writers and freethinkers, and she found work editing a literary review but yearned constantly for companionship, "someone of her own." Her lovers, though, were married men, including the love of her life, George Lewes, with whom she spent more than two happy decades, evolving from a figure of scandal to an international literary success. Smith (The Illusionists, 1997, etc.) narrates Evans' life story in long flashbacks from the "present," in which Eliot/Evans is 60 and on a honeymoon in Venice after Lewes' death. This first actual marriage is to family friend Johnnie Cross, "a pure clean youth, a work of art" more than 20 years younger than her, a man who, his behavior in Italy suggests, is either gay, having a nervous breakdown, or both. While Smith's portrait of the author is nicely detailed, effectively locating her in time, place, and society, its focus on Eliot's "need for love, for tenderness, a longing to be held" detracts from a sense of what made her writing so exceptional. The impression created is of an unusual but often emotionally needy woman who happened also to write supremely successful, uneclipsed works of fiction. An intelligent, delicate, but not quite rounded portrait of genius.
