Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Lifted Veil
    The Lifted Veil
    The Lifted Veil
    Audiobook1 hour

    The Lifted Veil

    Written by George Eliot

    Narrated by Cathy Dobson

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    One of George Eliot's most intriguing works. During a period of illness, Latimer first discovers an unusual ability. He is able to read other peoples' minds and see visions of the future. Rather than being a gift, this strange phenomenon increasingly becomes a curse. But the one thing that keeps him going is his love for Bertha who Latimer knows will one day marry him, and who is the one person whose thoughts remain a mystery to him. But everything changes when Latimer finally does gain sporadic insight into Bertha's mind... and finds her thoughts are much more sinister than he had anticipated.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRed Door Consulting
    Release dateMay 7, 2013
    ISBN9781467668941
    Author

    George Eliot

    George Eliot was the pseudonym for Mary Anne Evans, one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, who published seven major novels and several translations during her career. She started her career as a sub-editor for the left-wing journal The Westminster Review, contributing politically charged essays and reviews before turning her attention to novels. Among Eliot’s best-known works are Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, in which she explores aspects of human psychology, focusing on the rural outsider and the politics of small-town life. Eliot died in 1880.

    More audiobooks from George Eliot

    Related to The Lifted Veil

    Related audiobooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The best-ever ROMANCES

      Jan 7, 2021

      The best-ever ROMANCES
      2 min read

    • Article

      Consider the Love of Monsters

      Jan 12, 2018

      After finishing Rachel Ingalls’s Mrs. Caliban, which originally appeared in 1982 and was re-issued this past November by New Directions, you may wonder how the marvelous secret of this novel was kept from you for so long. At 111 pages, shorn of exten

      6 min read

    • Article

      Finding GRETA

      Dec 6, 2020

      At a time when overseas travel is impossible, it was such a pleasure to sink into this book and go to all the places it took me. To begin with, though, I was hesitant about picking it up. In recent years, I’ve read a lot of fiction about people who a

      1 min read

    • Article

      Spoilt For Choice

      Oct 14, 2022

      Murder, vengeance, greed and the supernatural arrive in Portland, Maine, hometown of private investigator Charlie Parker. This, the 20th book in the series, is actually two short novels in one. The Sisters Strange, the first and longest, begins with

      3 min read

    • Article

      Flawed Genius

      Jul 18, 2021

      Flawed Genius
      2 min read

    • Article

      A GAME OF Truth Or Dare

      Dec 27, 2020

      There was loads of buzz about this author’s debut novel, Call Me Evie, but I wasn’t among its biggest fans because I felt let down as the plot developed. Tell Me Lies, though, is as taut a thriller as you could hope to find and I was addicted instant

      1 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Jun 8, 2022

      Meredith Maggs hasn’t left her house for 1,214 days. She works from home, and the people she wants to see she lets in. Otherwise, her door is firmly shut to the outside world. But what happens when the outside comes knocking? What will it take for Me

      2 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Oct 15, 2021

      Books
      4 min read

    • Article

      Mothtown

      Nov 1, 2023

      RELEASED 14 NOVEMBER 300 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Caroline Hardaker Publisher Angry Robot Isolation and loss do strange things to you, as young David Porter, the protagonist of Catherine Hardaker’s eerie second novel, gradually discovers for hi

      1 min read

    • Article

      Read!

      Nov 14, 2021

      Twitch loves birdwatching, has pet chickens and pigeons, and swallows nesting in his bedroom. In the summer holidays, he arrives at his secret hide in the wood to find police everywhere. A robber has escaped prison and is hiding in Aves Wood. Can Twi

      2 min read

    • Article

      Read ! Read!

      Aug 14, 2022

      A chicken called Clara has been telling lies about the ducks of Little Dismal, and the ducks are furious. After an embarrassing talent night, the poetic duck Rita sees a chance to restore her damaged reputation – revenge against Clara. Rita’s mission

      1 min read

    • Article

      'The Ghost Tracks' Is Heartwarming Horror Fiction

      Nov 29, 2021

      Celso Hurtado's YA horror novel combines a real San Antonio legend with classic elements of YA narratives to tell a story of friendship that explores the possibility of the supernatural.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Hot Right Now!

      Apr 18, 2024

      If you find it hard to resist a nail-biting thriller, then you’ll want to sink your teeth into this twisty novel by Lesley Kara! Haunted by her traumatic past, Marlow finds a job as a live-in property guardian for an old Victorian school. Things real

      1 min read

    • Article

      Grim Farrago

      Apr 27, 2023

      Arkham, Massachusetts, 1929. Walter Gilman, a man who should probably know better, rents a room in a house with an evil reputation, and stubbornly refuses to leave when it turns out to be infested with unearthly vermin. Maybe it’s because his aunt ha

      3 min read

    • Article

      Read! Read!

      Apr 9, 2023

      THE SCHOOL FOR THIEVES J.J. ARCANJO Gabriel isn’t like other 13-year-olds – he’s an incred pickpocket. One day, he is caught, but is invited to a school for thieves. The mysterious Caspian Crook wants Gabriel to improve his lockpicking, forgery, and

      2 min read

    • Article

      Smoking MIRRORS

      May 30, 2021

      The imaginary world of childhood is the backdrop to this sinister psychological thriller. It is set in a rambling old Edinburgh house where twin sisters El and Cat live inside a make-believe existence of pirate ships, witches, clowns and wild adventu

      1 min read

    • Article

      'Mental,' 'Gorilla And The Bird': Two Starkly Different Accounts Of Bipolar Disorder

      Oct 3, 2017

      Both books vividly capture the dizzying highs of mania and the shattering lows of depression that mark the disease. Mental's approach is comprehensive, Gorilla and the Bird's more intimate.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Reading Corner

      Sep 18, 2023

      What a completely addictive read. I was so gripped by its twists and turns that I read None of This is True in a single sitting. I kept thinking, “Just one more chapter”, but then had to keep rollercoastering on towards the end. It’s dark and very pa

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Lifted Veil

    3.5/5

    163 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Moderately interesting supernatural Victorian short story with clairvoyance and raising dead.
    • 4/5
      This novella is two things in hindsight: it is gothic-ish science fiction avant la lettre, and it is Twilight-from-Edward’s-perspectiveLatimer is a sensitive young lad growing up in the shadow of his older brother, who is more successful, handsomer, with a better sense for business and who is groomed by their father to take over the family estate. Latimer, indifferent to society’s expectations of a gentleman, is sent to a Swiss boarding school and expects to spend the rest of his life on the sufferance of his elders and betters. Until, after a sudden illness, he finds he has become sensitive to the future: he has visions of cities he has not yet visited, and discovers he can see into people’s minds, too. When he falls in love, it is with a girl who is unique in that her mind is closed to him; he cannot read her thoughts. As it turns out, she’s his brother’s fiancée, too. There’s a nice, moody sense of gloom hanging over this tale, and the portions that could be called gothicky and (in hindsight) “science fiction” are nicely balanced by some well-written 19th century musings on introspective angst. I liked this one, and am disappointed to find out this is the only speculative fiction thing Eliot ever wrote.
    • 4/5
      A novella about a troubled young man, the son and heir to a wealthy banker (or some such). A great exercise if you want to think about "the reliability of the narrator," because he's clearly mad as a hatter but doesn't know it; but it's mercifully short. George Eliot's writing is superb as usual, though the story is very odd and gets especially weird towards the end.
    • 5/5
      Apparently this novel was not only unusual for George Elliot, but for the time. The author presents Latimer - a young man from a wealthy self-made family who is not raised to carry on the family business - that is left to his stronger and lustier older brother. Whilst in Switzerland studying in a healthy atmosphere where he is thriving, he has a clairvoyant moment that leads to a dead faint. As the blurb from the book states: Latimer, a sensitive and intellectual man, finds he has clairvoyant powers. Then he has a vision of a woman, 'pale, fatal-eyed', whom he later meets: she in Bertha Grant, his brother's fiancee. Entranced, bewildered, Latimer falls under her spell, unwilling to take heed of the warning visions which beset him. In this edition, there is an excellent essay on George Elliot and this novella's publication history. At the time of writing, the concept of being able to change your fate was little considered - fate was fate and the fact that you could see into your future or that of others was unfortunate but unchangeable. It is only is later years that the concept of changing your fate has been presented although not all novels and other media such as plays and movies allow us to get off so easily, as there is a common theme of running away from the known fate, only to reach it in another quite different manner. The Twilight Zone made much of this theme in its shows - so too Alfred Hitchcock's TV Theater plays.
    • 4/5
      This is the only book I read on the train that I actually brought with me to read on the train. One of Melville House Books' Art of the Novella series, I was drawn to it as soon as I saw the author. I read Middlemarch a year or so back and absolutely loved it, but I hadn't yet read anything else by Eliot. As I am given to understand, this work both is and is not representative of her novel writing. It of course features her empathetic characterizations and high-minded idealism, but in this novella these traits are interwoven with supernatural suspense.

      A pleasing, old-fashioned yet somehow modern page-turner, this story seems both to praise and condemn the veils of privacy that shield each person's heart and mind from any other. How much misery could be avoided if each couple perhaps knew each other a little better before committing to spend their entire lives together? And yet how much misery to know everything -- every thought and judgement and disappointment in another's mind?

      Highly recommended. In fact, I have a friend who I may have to buy a copy for.
    • 4/5
      A deep dark psycho-depressive Victorian horror novella from Eliot, with a good ambiguous touch--we never know if Latimer really has the clairvoyant sight he claims, and therefore if the veil that lifts is the one between man and true sight, or madness. It's psychologically skilled on a more mundane level as well, with the treatment of a loveless cold war of a relationship between a narcissist and a histrionic--the fear of others and yet the fear of isolation. It's minor Eliot, but it's Eliot, and that means quality.
    • 5/5
      I did not find this to be a lovely book, but I do find that my opinion of this book remains drastically different from most L.T. readers of the book.I thought The Lifted Veil to be quite brilliant. As I read, I felt myself looking into the man's mind and found myself to be momentarily taking on his mental persona as well. I was not bored. I was not piqued. I was not grossed out. The book did not depress me nor did it make me nervous or anxious. I was nothing but a person within another person's ill mind. There was very little within the book that was literal and not simply in his mind.Yes, I thought it very different and as I said rather brilliant; much as I found Dracula when I read it.Sorry ladies and gentleen of the jury. I shall, most likely, be the only one here with this opinion. But then too, I am probably the only one here who has been on a psyche ward for depression, anxiety and panic attack as well. I cannot say if that colored my reading of this book.
    • 3/5
      A mini-book containing a short story about a man whose life is blighted by his ability to foresee the future and read other people's thoughts.
    • 3/5
      [The Lifted Veil] is a rather anamolous novella by George Eliot as it deals with the supernatural and seems to be Eliot's foray into Gothic experimentation.Latimer, the protagonist, is a rather neurasthenic young man who becomes obsessed with Bertha Grant, his robust brother's fiancee. After his brother dies in an accident, he marries Bertha although he has a premonitory vision of their miserable life together.I found the narrator somewhat intriguing, but I don't think the other characters were at all well developed. Eliot built the suspense well, but I thought the payoff was pretty anti-climactic. Up until that point, I thought the book was very Poe-like, but Poe usually manages to "thrill" the reader in a more satisfying way. Her exploration was more philosophical than Gothic -- more interested in the horrors of a life lived outside of meaningful social contacts than creating terror or horror in her readers.
    • 5/5
      Gorgeous short story. Really beautifully written, and an intense read.
    • 3/5
      More of a short story than a novel (at only 60+ pages plus an afterwards by a modern writer), this was a fast, enjoyable read. Eliot's style and tone here reminded me of Frankenstein and a number of Poe's short stories.