I read Eugenie Grandet after a long period of non-classics reading and till the end, I just thought either the way people in 18th century thought was too simple or the way we think is too complicated, because the characters happened to seem so predictable too me. The good ones were too stupid and the bad ones were caricatures of villains. In my opinion nothing really important happened during the story and if it wasn't for the reducing number of pages, I would've thought the main story hasn't begun yet. And at the end I just thought why should one even care?
Or maybe simply I am mentally incapable of understanding a masterpiece!