The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Northanger Abbey
by Jane Austen
Genre: Historical Romance
About: At seventeen years old, Catherine Morland's greatest excitement has come from the pages of novels, with a taste for the gothic. But when chance sends her to Bath, she becomes the unlikely heroine to a tale of duplicity, romance, heartbreak and mysterious deaths...
The Good
There are some truly great characters that are, as often with Jane Austen, laugh out loud funny in their ridiculousness. Mrs Allen, General Tilney and Isabelle Thorne are as wonderfully silly, vain and contradictory as you could wish and Henry Tilney is genuinely charming - his teasing of his sister and Catherine are not unlike Austen's teasing of many of her other characters.
The Bad
A lot of work is put into introducing the reader to Bath (giving a more detailed portrayal of the city and how balls were experienced than other Austen novels) but doesn't put as much time into the people. Catherine's circle is very small, her experiences very limited, and this doesn't expand much by the end as, ultimately, the novel is far too short in length. Setting is emphasised and circumstances explained to the reader, leading to long descriptions rather than character interactions. The conversations are brilliant but few, and the characters are interesting but so much of their lives are left blank. Eleanor's love, for instance, is thrown in at the end for convenience when it would have been an interesting point for Catherine and the reader to know of beforehand, satisfying us at its happy conclusion and showing more of the close friendship between Eleanor and Catherine. As for Henry, he has great conversations with Catherine but since she has so little knowledge of men and is so very young and naïve, it's hard to root for them in the same way as Austen's other novels, where the heroines have more relationships to compare their fancy's to.
The Somewhat Iffy
I enjoyed the portrayal of Bath and how easily connections might be misrepresented, but I found General Tilney's belief in Catherine's wealth to be a little odd. To believe her an heiress after weeks in her company and knowing the fierce scrutiny he displays for all other things, his ability to be deceived in this didn't quite ring true. Her style of dress, for one, must have shown she was not so extremely well off as he was imagining.
Overall
A very enjoyable read that is - at all times - entirely conscious of being a novel and wanting its reader to be swept away in the fantasy as well as laugh at the wild imaginings that novels bring.
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