Book review: ‘Northanger Abbey’ by Jane Austen

To honour a drunken deal made with my sister-in-law several years ago, Northanger Abbey is the fifth Jane Austen novel I’ve read in five Januarys. A deal is a deal.

What can I say about Northanger Abbey that I haven’t already said about Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma? Well, unlike its predecessors, I suppose it is mercifully short. But it’s still the same basic plot: a bunch of privileged people going to balls, and a heroine agonising about things she really shouldn’t be agonising about and eventually hooking up with some wonderfully suitable bloke she hardly knows.

I have to say, Northanger Abbey got off to a pretty bad start with me. In describing our heroine, Catherine Morland, in the opening paragraph, Austen writes:

Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard…

I think I speak on behalf of all Richards, respectable and otherwise, when I say, Knob off, Miss Austen!

I read somewhere Northanger Abbey is supposed to be a satire on young women whose over-impressionable imaginations are stimulated by reading the wrong kinds of novels. I can see why this might make an amusing theme for a novel written and set in the late-eighteenth century, but it didn’t do anything for me. In fact, that element of the story seemed rather silly. I couldn’t help thinking this posthumously published novel was only put out because it was by a popular author with a large existing fanbase hungry for more. The end, in particular, seemed very rushed, as if even Jane Austen was getting a bit fed up with it all.

Not my cup of tea, but, if you like Jane Austen’s other stuff, you’ll probably like this.