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A review by vibeke_hiatt
Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly
1.0
I just can't do it. There are too many good books to read to waste any more time on this one. There were points in the first chapter I agreed with, such as the fact that we know so little about Jane Austen and we can't really be sure how true the statements from her family were. But then Kelly smugly claims that she can figure Jane Austen out through her novels. She's forgetting one crucial fact about reading: A reader can never read a book without some measure of personal bias. Anything Kelly learns will be tainted by her own experience and beliefs.
She repeatedly refers to Austen as "Jane." Frank Churchill had something to say about that in Emma. It assumes a familiarity that just cannot exist 200 years after Austen's death.
There is nothing wrong with recognizing the romance in Austen's books, as long as you pay attention to the other themes, too. I'm afraid Kelly was so focused on reading between the lines, she forgot to read the lines themselves. Bear in mind that anything she sets forth in this book is opinion, not fact.
Instead of finishing, I think I'll just reread Jane Austen's novels critically for myself and enjoy what they personally mean to me.
She repeatedly refers to Austen as "Jane." Frank Churchill had something to say about that in Emma. It assumes a familiarity that just cannot exist 200 years after Austen's death.
There is nothing wrong with recognizing the romance in Austen's books, as long as you pay attention to the other themes, too. I'm afraid Kelly was so focused on reading between the lines, she forgot to read the lines themselves. Bear in mind that anything she sets forth in this book is opinion, not fact.
Instead of finishing, I think I'll just reread Jane Austen's novels critically for myself and enjoy what they personally mean to me.