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While I have long favored team Bronte (Charlotte and Emily especially) over Austen, this amazing book pushed me to read the rest of her novels (I had only read Emma and Pride and Prejudice before), and found much more to love, thanks to Deresiewicz's enthusiasm. Each chapter focuses on how a specific Austen novel helped the author navigate a struggle in growing up. Each chapter also contains just enough plot description and Austen biography to give a reader unfamiliar with Austen's work an idea of the central ideas and characters. If you don't want spoilers, read the six Austen classics first. Probably by that time you will love Austen as much as Deresiewicz.
What would have been an overly sentimental, moralistic, and fan-gushing, read -- turns out to be a very well-wrought memoir, that combines both nuanced reading and sensitive retrospection. Austen created memorable, mature, and magnificent characters. William Deresiewicz, likewise, gives us an intimate and sensitive portrayal of his family, friends, and above all, himself, in this literary-memoir. The memoir's ending is a stroke of genius.
like the author I missed out on Austen, Bronte in college, so much insight from their books
This was a delightful book. I love a man who extolls the virtues of Jane!!!
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