Book Review: Northanger Abbey

I recently finished Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. As I said in my review of Blink, I was reading this as part of a book club which will be meeting at the end of the month. The book was one of the first written by Jane Austen, but was published posthumously. After reading it, I think I understand why.

The writing style is not bad, except for the voice of the narration. Typically you will have a third party omniscient narration, first person narration, or third person narration which is not omniscient but rather follows one specific character. The narration of the novel changed between third person narration following Catherine (the protagonist) to what was almost a first person narrative in which the author converses directly with the reader about the heroine, the reading of novels, etc. (For the record, here at The Fount we would like to see more novels narrated in the second person like the Choose Your Own Adventure books from when I was a kid, but that's really beside the point.) Not only is the repeated changing of narrative tone annoying, but the direct discourse between author and reader is distracting and serves to pull the reader out of the story. This technique has been used many times in other novels (the most obvious example would be Goldman's The Princess Bride) but works better when applied in a consistent, and preferably ironic manner.

While Northanger Abbey is usually considered to be a satirical take on the Gothic novel, a large portion of the novel is in fact a satire of life and class structure at the time. Unfortunately, I felt that there was a significant and not too smooth transition between when Catherine is visiting Bath (the satire of society) and when she visits Northanger Abbey (the satire of Gothic novels). Much of the second portion of the book feels rushed, as if Austen realized how much had been written and decided that if she were to satirize the Gothic novels she had best get moving. Suddenly we are faced with a protagonist who has gone from quaintly naive to naively idiotic.

Other than the voice of the narration, my biggest complaint about the book was the conclusion. Several storylines are just forgotten and the main story is wrapped up in a completely unconvincing and unsatisfying manner. So much of the book is spent crawling at a snail's pace (which is not necessarily a bad thing), but when we get to any resolution, everything just happens and then we stop...The end. I felt underwhelmed by the abrupt halt after the build up of the entire novel.

Overall was it a good book? Sure. Did I have issues with it? Yeah. Is it something I'd like to read again for fun? No, not really.

The verdict: 2 stars. Recommended with reservations.

A brief note on the book front: After looking at the "What am I reading?" section on the sidebar, some of my readers may decide to disown me. Before you jump to any conclusions about my taste (or lack thereof), let me say I promise that I will explain in the next book review, which should be in the next couple of days.

Until later...