Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
My Rating: 5 of 5 stars
Book Summary:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s witty comedy of manners—one of the most popular novels of all time—that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues. Renowned literary critic and historian George Saintsbury in 1894 declared it the “most perfect, the most characteristic, the most eminently quintessential of its author’s works,” and Eudora Welty in the twentieth century described it as “irresistible and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be.”
–penguinrandomhouse.com
Book Review:
Pride and Prejudice has my heart. Jane Austen is my guilty pleasure and I cannot even begin to explain how much I adore this book. It is beyond words. This is not a review of the book as much as it is unencumbered admiration.
The beauty of language, the words Austen strings together; it’s just so enchanting. I would love to be able to write like this, if ever I write a book. Which I intend to. But I have not found a book yet that rivals this one in the loveliness of language, and I don’t think I ever shall.
It is a well known and much loved classic for a reason. It is truly only the execution of writing by Austen that elevates this book to an art form. Her subtlety, her sentences, her descriptions and so much of what is not very obviously stated, is pure talent.
I do not think that has ever been anyone like Austen, and I fear and hope in equal amounts that there never will be. Fear, that we may never get any more books written with such wit and attention and writing style. Hope, because if by chance someone does, would it not be something worth rejoicing for? Would it not be absolutely necessary for us to admire someone who is capable of such amazing work?
If, when I write a book, I am capable of even an iota of what Austen has accomplished in her works, I shall be satisfied.
