serpents and sylphs and psychics and George Eliot (!)

I read George Eliot's "The Lifted Veil" for the first time, and - seriously, how do I keep missing Eliot stuff? By all rights I should have read her as a child. I would've loved her then. Not that I don't now, but! Anyway, TLV is thoroughly great. Deliciously typical gothic stuff, with psychics and visions and blood transfusions that can bring you back from the dead. Also, fascinatingly, did that same thing Mary Shelley always does with the male protag/first person gender identity confusion - speaks as an "I" through the body of a man. Which femmes out the protag significantly - and attractively. Apparently the first person is required for the gothic?

And of course it's not nearly as good as Middlemarch, but I couldn't put it down. Why are psychic visions so damn pleasing, anyway? *Wriggles*

Now, back to reading too much criticism and not enough fiction.