Coincidentally, this is a re-read book too (no, this won't be a trend), but I didn't pay really close attention to it the first time around, and frankly, I don't think I actually finished it. So in that sense, it's a bit like reading a book for which you've already seen the movie - you've got a basic idea of what's going on in the story, but the details aren't there.
The 'novel' not only tells a story (or more accurately, stories) but also in several chapters, moves into philosophical and aesthetic discussions, something not surprising for a Victorian novel. But this is a novel of the periphery. It's author lived in South Africa before venturing to London to try and sell the book, and the novel features a glossary of Dutch and Afrikan (Boer) terms to help oreint the reader.
What for me was remarkable about this book was the way it dealt with the lives of the characters. Although there was a foray into allegory, into philosophical rants on the rights of women, and even historical asides, what kept me reading was the characters. They all seemed so willing to accept their fate, and even the 'New Woman' at the center of the novel, the one who wants an education and not to be just someone's wife, aspires to more, but accepts that her aspirations don't necessarily match the society she lives in.
This was an unusual book in many ways - not like other Victorian novels, yet not like a contemporary novel either. It anticipates modernist writers, especially feminist ones, but it also contains several formal elements that reminded me more of an eighteenth century novel than one written at the close of the nineteenth.