Just Finished Reading: A Jane Austen Education – How Six Novels taught me about Love, Friendship, and the Things that Really Matter by William Deresiewicz (FP: 2011)

Ok, how do you expect me to resist a book with that title? It practically LEPT off the table in the book store into my open hand. As a huge Austen fan (although with two of her books still unread – I bought the missing one last weekend) and someone with a growing interest in rather quirky Lit Crit I just had to read this. Considering I only bought it a few months ago it actually landed at the top of my ‘to read soon’ list pretty damned quick. But was it any good? Reader, I loved it (OK, that was paraphrasing a Bronte novel but I’ll get to that…).

Using each of the six novels to concentrate on a particular life lesson: Emma (Everyday Matters), Pride and Prejudice (Growing Up), Northanger Abbey (Learning to Learn), Mansfield Park (Being Good), Persuasion (True Friends) and Sense and Sensibility (Falling in Love) the author relates, along with a great deal of humour and personal revelations, how each book started him on the road to questioning the ways he had always done things and who he actually was (and wanted to be). His biggest revelation it seemed was that not only could Austen actually write – he was initially rather dismissive of 19th century literature as a whole – but that her novels were most definitely not simply early 19th century ‘chick lit’. Being forced, with great reluctance, to read Emma as part of his graduate English course he initially hated it (as did I) but was then increasingly brought under Austen’s spell as the eponymous character blossomed before his eyes. From then on he was hooked on Austen. So much so, indeed, that he used the lessons learnt from Emma to start a life changing process beginning with dumping his then girlfriend and moving further away from his domineering father. Not a bad start from someone so initially disparaging of her work! Over the next 3-4 years and 5 more novels the author become more convinced of Austen’s genius and used the lessons embedded between the covers to analyse both what was wrong in his own life and what was wrong in the world around him. It was, I can tell you, quite a journey.

Told with great dollops of literary insight – so much so that I’m tempted to re-read the Austen books I’ve already finished as well as finally read the final two - Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park – as soon as possible. Re-reading books is a very rare activity for me but I think I’d find it interesting in this case as I could compare, in detail, the authors impressions compared with me own. I certainly agreed with a great deal of what he said regarding my favourite Austen novels – P&P, Persuasion and Emma (in order of preference) so re-reading them might give me a greater insight although I’m not sure if by doing so my life would change that much! His analysis of the two books I have yet to read has definitely piqued my interest and has definitely raised their profile and accelerated them on the path towards actually being read!

Interestingly after I finished this delightfully interesting book I checked to see if the author had written anything else. He had – and I immediately impulse bought his work outlining what he thinks is wrong with graduate education in the USA (although I’m guessing this would apply in the UK too if not necessarily elsewhere). His style, whit, insights and humour made this a hugely enjoyable work and I can highly recommend it to any Austen fans out there.  

Oh, the Bronte thing - it seems that in the world of English Lit there's a huge competitive rift between fans of each author and, in the end, he really did marry her (without giving too much away....)