Word: austen
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THERE IS, OF COURSE, the great Jane Austen question in fiction. There will always be those who feel that the plot's the thing. No matter how rich the prose, no matter how sharp the dialogue, no matter how true the perceptions of human nature, how important can a book be if its plot ranges no further than the marriage hopes of a few country girls...
Gillian Freeman, who is quite literate, is a writer in the Austen tradition. With its gothic surprise ending and all, the plot of An Easter Egg Hunt could be summarized in a couple of lines. Yet Freeman does more than merely tell a story. She re-creates an era. The story is set in the famed English countryside, during World War I. The Great War intrudes on the narrative no more than it intrudes on the small girls' school in which the action transpires. Tightened food supplies and army cadets training nearby are the only evidence in the girls' little...
...sardonic wit of the book's modern narrator, the novel envied the hidden passions underlying the Jane Austen world of garden parties and social proprieties. The contrast of Pinter's parallel stories preserves that envy, for the 19th-century drama features powerfully driven characters whose passions are strong enough to shred apart their lives. The story of the 20th century, on the other hand, concerns the off-hand affair between the two leads, Anna and Mike, during the shooting of the film--a cheap and superficial encounter. The present world is too comfortable, the emotions somehow counterfeit...
...Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice...
Love and Freindship, Jane Austen...