Middlemarch

“Middlemarch,” “Crime and Punishment,” “Ulysses.”

“Like Woolf said of ‘Middlemarch,’ this is a novel written for grown-up people — the most surprising and satisfying element in a continually surprising and satisfying debut.”

“A novel without weakness” was how the generally unsparing Martin Amis assessed her “Middlemarch,” the mistress-piece to which Rebecca Mead, a writer for The New Yorker, devoted an entire memoir.

He leaves her, she who “handled things ineptly,” carried a copy of “Middlemarch” without ever finishing it and “hurt people I love being so/ late to my desires.”

And Nighy thought: “This is what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m supposed to be sitting under a tree reading ‘Middlemarch.’”