So I don’t think I have anything generally meaningful to say about Emma by Jane Austen. The novel is 200 years old, is arguably her best (which is something you can say about pretty much all of her books), and is more or less number 3-4 on my list of my favorite of her novels (For me it’s Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility/Emma, Northanger Abbey — and I still need to read Mansfield Park). So I will just make some stray remarks.
–This book feels longer than her other ones (again, minus Mansfield Park, which I think is longer) and this additional length gives it more of the feeling of a later novel — perhaps a Bronte or Eliot novel — as it gives some room for more than the main storyline to find its way in the novel.
–I like that Emma is not necessarily a particularly likable protagonist…inasmuch as she acts selfishly and frustratingly at times. This does not make her a bad protagonist at all — in fact, she’s great. I think this is a good book to look at how a narrative gaze has more to do with “rooting” for a character than their characteristics. I find it a mostly useless comment to decide whether or not you like a main character or not in most novels.
–This book is OG Amelie, right ?
–I still don’t understand how they managed to make a Gwyneth Paltrow out of this one.
–Umm, does Knightley groom Emma?
–This book also suggests something I was thinking about the other day. A book like this, with so much charming and perfectly voiced narration cannot turn into anything more than a simulacrum of a film.
Like most Jane Austen novels, you already know whether or not you’ll like this one.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Emma-Penguin-Classics-Jane-Austen/dp/0141439580/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1550505156&sr=8-3&keywords=emma+jane+austen)