10/100: A Jane Austen Education

I am officially one-tenth of the way finished with my reading goal! That's exciting to say.
My tenth book was A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz. I discovered this title after re-reading parts of Book Girl by Sarah Clarkson.

There were parts of this book that I really enjoyed. I found the author's reviews of each of the six novels Austen is most famous for (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Emma) to be illuminating. As someone who has struggled with reading Austen, I was grateful to have a modernized recap of each novel; I feel a little more comfortable going into reading the novels now because I have a better grasp of what's going on.


Deresiewicz consistently connects his experiences with Austen's novels to his personal life, which I surprisingly enjoyed. His main purpose in the novel was illustrating how an unlikely guy can find connection and meaning with 18th century English literature and I think he conveyed that adequately. He also included quite a bit of historical information about Jane Austen herself, including excerpts from letters, and background information regarding her close family and friends.


I found his analysis of each novel to be unique and interesting. Granted, I have not read any of her books all the way through (except I am pretty sure I was able to complete Pride and Prejudice), though I am familiar with the general storylines and characters. He connected the messages he thought Austen was trying to achieve with her characters by sharing her history and using it to back up his analysis.

I think my biggest issue was the set-up of the whole novel. His work reads like a large essay, with each chapter devoted to a separate novel. This would be fine except the chapters seemed to go on and on. I often found that the points he was trying to make were restated again and again, just in different words. The book is fairly short already, but it seemed to go on forever because it took the author so long to make his point.

While the subjects were interesting, and I was excited to learn more about Austen and her novels, his style of writing really turned me off to this book, and it felt like a chore to get through. The saving grace that pushed me to complete it was the knowledge that I was gaining background information to the novels that would eventually help me when I go on to actually read them myself.

All that to say, I'm glad I read it and finished it, but I would only recommend this book to certain friends, and I can't see myself re-reading this.

Stats: 
Completed: Feb 6
Rating: 2 stars
Pages: 255