Book Review: Emma

(Borrowed from the Jackson Heights library) Another one of the 100 books I'm supposed to read before I die according to the BBC. I did not enjoy this one as much as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility which were more complex. Emma begins as a terrible snob who misleads herself and her friend Harriet in love among the middle-class country gentry. But she turns out to be a repentant ex-matchmaker after her brother-in-law Knightley sets her right. I enjoyed talkative Miss Bates and Mrs. Eston whose lengthly monologues on everything from appropriate behavior to furniture to horses were very funny. Mr. Woodhouse, Emma's father, is a delightful fussbudget who dreads taking a step outside of their house. A classic portrait of a young woman who thinks she knows everything learning the value of true friendship and maturity.

Book Review: Sense and Sensibility

(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. 

Book Review: Pride and Prejudice

(Read on my I-phone on the Libby app, digital edition borrowed from the NYPL) Another one of the 100 books the BBC says I should read before I die and this is the first time I have read a Jane Austen novel. I had seen several film and TV adaptations of Austen's original so it was fascinating to compare them to the original. As I suspected, Lady Catherine does not barge into the Bennett household in the middle of the night as she did in the 2005 version. (She arrives in the afternoon in the book.) Neither does she make up with Darcy right away and overcome her objections to his engagement to Elizabeth as she does in the 1940 MGM Hollywood version. The original is also much harsher on Elizabeth's parents. In the various film adaptations, they are well-meaning but bungling. Austen portrays them as dangerously naive, foolish and empty-headed. Worst of all, their marriage is one of misalliance.

Austen's classic is just as much about manners, protocol, and finance as it is about romance, offering a snapshot of upper-middle class British life in the early 19th century. The tension between Elizabeth and Darcy is palpable and you do feel great relief when they finally get together. The characterizations and dialogue are rich, especially of Darcy and Elizabeth, Mrs. Bennett and the flighty daughter Lydia.