When Southerner Margaret Hale is forced to relocate to the northern town of Milton, she finds herself hating the industrial society, offended by the townspeople and disgusted by the dirt and noise she finds there. Mill owner John Thornton represents all she has come to despise about her new home. But gradually, Margaret's attitudes soften, and she makes friends with people in the town, learning about the plight of the millworkers - their poverty and workplace struggles. As events throw Margaret and John together, she realises even two complete opposites can fall in love.

The writing and characters are the heart of this story. ( )

A patronising and toe curling attitude to the British proletariat. I'd had enough after 80 pages. ( )

Really great. ( )

Now I don't have anything against Elizabeth Gaskell but she just didn't blow me away with this one. It was truly a rollercoaster ride, but not in the exciting way that people generally mean. Rather, I got 157 pages into it reading a physical copy, put the copy down to study for finals, and didn't return until it was finally my turn to check out the audiobook from the library. In those 157 pages almost nothing interesting happened. In other words, the attendants were still seating people on the rollercoaster for a whole 157 pages. I was astonished when, on my 3rd or 4th hour of listening to the really too long audiobook while putting up wallpaper, suddenly things got interesting! I was really there for the mutiny and train station stuff which was pretty obviously foreshadowed, it just took longer to get there than my attention span would allow. So it was a fun rollercoaster after all. And yet, the rollercoaster slowed down for a good long time after the intense twists and turns, at which point I promptly lost interest once more and was glad to move onto my next book (a really quite old Chinese classic that is somehow managing to be much more exciting AND way saucier).Thank goodness for the mutiny, or else I would have had to give this classic only three stars. ( )