I was intrigued and settled down for the programme. Little did I know that I was to be stuck in that very same chair for the next month to come. Faithfully did I attend each installment and awaited the next week with abaited breath. After the first thirty minutes of the first episode, I knew I needed to read the book. Unfortunately, my local bookstore had no copies and it would take 4-6 weeks to order. So much for cheating on the plot. So I turned to amazon here (a little bit of publicity won't do any harm) and picked up a copy. It too took until after the series was completed to arrive but soon I settled in the with novel by Elizabeth Gaskell. One may wonder what all this talk is about, but for some reason or another, certain books are so attractive to the imagination that the reader can hardly read them fast enough (e.g. Pride and Preduice, The Bnze Bow, even Harry Potter). I was absorbed in the story of Molly and Cynthia, Osborne and the Squire et cetera. Through the nights I would stay up trying to finish while my husband snored beside me in bed. Periodically I would put the book down and let my imagination sore. I saw myself in Africa or in Hamley Hall and I even went so far as to look back to when I was seventeen and felt abandoned suddenly by my father (he remarried that year). To me this book provided the nessicary elements of a good tale yet left out enough for the imagination to supply imagry and conclusions (Mrs Gaskell never finished her work, dying a few weeks before finishing--it was semicompleted by her publisher). To some Wives and Daughters may be another Victorian romance with not enough to support it as high class literature. But in to me at least it proved that a good story and simplistic plot always works to spark the mind's eye. Have fun with the book and pass it along if you enjoyed it.Was this review helpful to you?