(Borrowed from the Jackson Heights Library.) After viewing a recent Netflix adaptation of Persuasion, I got the hankering to return to Jane Austen and continue to read the 100 books that the BBC says I should before I die. I'm up to 40 or so. After reading Austen's first published work, I appreciated Emma Thompson's 1995 screenplay adaptation all the more. Thompson crafted cinematic scenes detailing conflict and action. The book is an entirely different experience with most of the action conveyed through verbose 19th century dialogue and narration. I had to go back and re-read several passages to straighten out the relations of step-siblings, cousins, mothers- and fathers-in-law, etc. One especially confusing element was that apparently in 1811 England, the term step-mother and mother-in-law were interchangeable. Given the number of second marriages in the book, it grew quite confusing as to who was related to who, who was married to who and who was whose son or daughter or only married to their mother or father. In any event, the complex courtships and disappointments of the Dashwood sisters were absorbing. Austen's theme of common sense at odds with overly emotional responses to life (or sensibility as it was termed then) is powerfully delivered as Elinor and Marianne deal with misfortune in strikingly different ways. A subtler and deeper novel than Pride and Prejudice.
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