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** spoiler alert ** I was excited to read this version of Eliot's Daniel Deronda from Gwendolen's point of view. I should say that I own two sequels to Daniel Deronda called Gwendolen, this one published recently, and the other, anonymously authored, from 1878. (I have only been able to bring myself to skim that one, as Mirah dies, Deronda converts back to Christianity, and the Victorian conformity which this novel wonderfully sidesteps comes right back into place, as Anglican Widowed Daniel can marry Gwendolen. E.)

The typical critical response has always been that the Gwendolen parts of the novel are the best. I love her to bits, but I disagree -- sure Daniel is a bit of a judgmental prig, but he's interesting. Like Eliot's Dorothea Brooke, he's looking for some kind of meaning, and some kind of transcendence, and he finds it in discovering that he's actually Jewish (the circumstances of his birth having been kept from him). I mean, this is a Victorian Novel, and the hero is all "yay! I've just found out I'm Jewish! Yay!" which is not the kind of thing that happens in most Victorian novels.

But then there's Gwendolen, who's kind of like the pretty anti-heroines who Eliot clearly dislikes, like Rosamund Vincy and Hetty Sorrel. Except she's more self-aware than they are, and so limited by her circumstances, like Dorothea Brooke, who Eliot and I both adore. Souhami's retelling has a nicely feminist ending, involving a friendship with the real Eliot and more importantly, women's rights activist Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, who crusaded for married women's property rights. (Up to this point, when you married, everything belonged to your husband.) So I like that, except that this sort of thing happens pretty often in neovictorian novels.

I liked the narrative voice, but I wasn't really convinced by it. Souhami and I love some of the same characters -- Sir Hugo and Hans and Rex, in particular. But Gwendolen's obsession with Daniel starts to ring wrong to me. I think it's absolutely true she is hoping they will end up together, and is disappointed at the sudden turn of events of his marrying Mirah and going off to the Middle East. But I also think that, priggish and judgmental as Daniel can be, he does care for Gwendolen and he is honorable and would keep his promise to write Gwendolen. The interior life of the characters feels subtly off, at least to me. I do like that "Mrs. Lewes" suggests she thought that Gwendolen and Rex might get together after all (I always wondered that, too, though honestly he's her first cousin so really better not) but she sees that's not happening. That's a pretty cool metacommentary.