[Review] Emma -- Jane Austen
I finally picked up Jane Austen's Emma. I can't believe quite how long it's been since I read Austen. I absolutely loved Pride and Prejudice, but that was -- can it be? -- half a lifetime ago! I was very curious to see whether it would still strike me as strongly now.

I found Emma to be delightful. It was certainly a quick read, and I enjoyed watching her and Mr. Knightley play off of each other. Austen also has a talent for revealing characters in social situations. You need not know anything more about Mrs. Elton than the way she steamrolls a conversation and you have a perfect picture.

I did find Emma to be a little too familiar. That is, I could easily see myself making some of the same mistakes. I don't think I would have meddled nearly as much as she, but I certainly have been known to extrapolate wildly based on few facts. This is a practice that I have carefully learned to drop over the years. And vanity? I know a little something about that, or at least of pride.

Emma didn't reach me as Pride and Prejudice did at fifteen. There is something too incomplete in ending a book with marriage, after only infatuation and flirtation and before any of the meat of a relationship can be developed. For that I found Eliot's Middlemarch to be much more rich, but then again Eliot is a bit depressing and not nearly as overall entertaining as Austen. If I had wanted abject realism, I wouldn't have picked up such a sunny book as this.

And so, this book reminded me how lovely Austen is and how much I should reread Pride and Prejudice, and further, of the folly of my high school/college years. I can only hope that I do not lose all my folly with my yearly dose of wisdom. Otherwise, what will make my tears roll down in laughter when I'm 80 and looking back at my life? I hope there is still plenty of richness of feeling, both pain and pleasure, embarassment and unadulterated joy in my life to come.