Review: When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut

I went into this book unaware of what awaited me, and I was caught off-guard. It is an unusually structured book, and sails through history and historical personages at a brisk knot, and it took a while for me to find my sea legs.

The book begins with a three chapter preface, which makes up the first two fifths of the book. Labatut threads together 20th century inventions and discoveries: cyanide, black holes, algebraic proofs. Inventors and inventions both find themselves deployed in wars. Science and society are inextricably linked: developments in one shape the outcomes of the other. Both are driven by individuals, but advance on a scale so immense and interconnected that no one individual can turn the tides. Labatut’s stories are a mesmerizing blend of fact and fantasy, and it’s not always clear what is true, what is disputed, and what is fully invented.

The main section of the book continues in tone, focusing in particular on Schrodinger, Heisenberg, De Broglie, as they investigate the nature of matter and light. These hallowed figures find themselves caught up in madness, despair, sexual deviancy, mysticism, and spiteful feuds as they grapple with the biggest questions of physics and ramifications of their answers.

The final tenth of the book is a 5-part essay titled The Night Gardener. It echoes the themes and motifs of the preceding pages, but now without the giants of 20th century science: suicide, poison, fascists, the misuse of science in society, the struggle for individuals to shape society, society’s likely impending doom.

Negative reviews of this book point at its rehashing of tired science tropes: the lone genius driven mad by his discovery, oblivious to social norms and lacking in emotional awareness. Women enter the pages only to be objects of sexual desire. The author revels in the popular aesthetics of science — frantic midnight scribblings covering reams of paper, dramatic postulations at a lecture stand — more than shedding light on the experience of actually doing science. 

While these critiques are well-founded, it would be a shame to entirely dismiss the book on these grounds. Although the narrative revolves around science, the emotional aspects explored are not unique to science. What do you do when you cease to understand your world, when what you thought you knew is unveiled to be an illusion? Perhaps you’ve discovered your government aids a genocide, or someone dear to you breaks your trust. Do you withdraw into yourself? Abandon everything or end your life? Throw yourself back in with everything you have, and keep fighting? What is it like to feel torn between ambitions of greatness and feelings of uselessness? How do you come to terms with the fruits of your creative labour dispersing into the wild to be used and transformed beyond your intentions, out of your control? Labatut repeats these refrains in different keys and different voices. His unusual storytelling makes for a thought-provoking read with more to offer than a summary might suggest.

Review: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

This is a book for readers. Italo Calvino slips into your mind and examines every part of your relationship with books, showing you that you are connected with countless other readers through our mirrored experience in reading. 

Your never-ending reading list and the comfort of your reading routine. Word frequencies, and the way word choice characterizes a work. Reading a book alone, versus reading a book with another reader, versus being read to. Reading as a metaphor for social connection. Reading as a communication with the writer. Reading as a political activity. Reading a work only in translation and wondering what is lost. Reading as a spiraling activity:

If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it.

One of the most unique of these, that I have felt but had never seen expressed so evocatively, is the difference between reading as a reader and reading as a writer or editor: 

Now you understand Ludmilla’s refusal to come with you; you are gripped by the fear of having also passed over to “the other side” and of having lost that privileged relationship with books which is peculiar to the reader: the ability to consider what is written as something finished and definitive, to which there is nothing to be added, from which there is nothing to be removed.

I choose “the other side”, that privilege of the editor or the writer. The ability to see the seams of a work, to see what could be tightened, that makes reading more enjoyable to me, not less. But I am not immune to a little sentimental reflection on those days gone by when every book was a wonder, every scientific paper a flawless addition to the literature.

These meditations on reading, all told in second-person, are interspersed with segments of lost novels, all told in first person. The overall plot that ties together this ode to books is that due to publishing house mishaps, political strife and various other interruptions, you, the reader, can never finish any one of these books despite desperately wanting to. The lost fragments range from the creative and thought-provoking to the cliche and boring. Portrayal of women left much to be desired. Portrayal of political topics was also disappointing; when writing on this vein, Calvino reads like any other disillusioned twentieth century socialist. I mostly found myself awaiting the next frame story, for when you, the reader, or I, the reader, could next discover what aspect of our relationship with books would be probed next.

Review: Friend by Nam-nyong Paek

There are two approaches to reviewing Friend. I’ll start with the road less-traveled, which is to comment on the themes, the characterizations, the aesthetics, the author’s apparent intent, and so-on, i.e., the typical book review structure.

Part 1: On The Book

The novel investigates the fracturing of a marriage. Chae Sun-Hee seeks a divorce from her husband, Lee Seok-Chun, and by luck the judge overseeing her suit is Jeong Jin-Wu, a man who experiences difficulty navigating his own marriage, and who steps in to be the friend the divorcing couple didn’t know they needed — someone who listens to them empathetically and helps them see their marital problems and individual needs from another angle.

We see deeply into the hearts of these three people, we learn who they were when they first fell in love, and how their priorities in life shifted as they aged, discovered new interests, and dedicated themselves to their professions. These challenges are common ones — the difficulty in balancing the professional development of two individuals, the difficulty in finding common ground with a spouse with a different level of ambition or worldliness or who is motivated by different causes. The author skillfully portrays believable characters, with each character being “right” in their own way even as they disagree with each other, and with each character presenting both human flaws (withdrawness, selfishness, snobbery) and human aspirational qualities (dedication, empathy, ambitiousness).

These are questions of mid-life, amplified by the characters undergoing not only changes brought about by their advancing maturity but also by changes in society. In days gone by, women stayed home and prepared meals and cared for children. The challenge of balancing these social expectations with the pressures of a career becomes a point of contention between a career woman and her husband. In earlier days, society lauded factory work, where in the time of the novel’s setting (1980s) there is growing need (and social reward) for more specialized roles requiring further education. The lathe operator without further training gets left behind.

The narrative of individuals discovering love, discovering heartbreak, and rediscovering love is reflected in the ever-changing wonder of nature. The snow can be both a thing of beauty and delight or of devastation. A mountain range is stunning, but the weary may nap through a scenic journey instead of appreciating it. And the wind? The wind represents the loneliness of a being who moves forward thinking only of their own excitement, not sometimes bowing to the needs of another.

From whence, from whom, for what reason was the wind running, like a fugitive, like someone who has abandoned his family? Who will ever know its point of departure, who will ever know its lonesome fate? It wanders the earth aimlessly, seeking refuge among the trees in the depths of a forest or by a river in an open meadow. It dashes by without looking back or it lurks around a single spot. At times, it affectionately embraces life, sharing warmth and love with everything near and far. At other times, it bellows with rage and devours everything in sight with a destructive force that makes the earth shudder. It gets soaked in the cold rain and freezes in the icy blizzard. It moans in agony and howls into the lonely night. But then, on a quiet day, it wakes from the warmth of the sun and embarks on its journey yet again, looking forward to the promise of a new day, a new adventure. This is why it can never find a mate and, therefore, lives a most miserable life. 

(...)

“When were you planning to leave for Yeonsudeok again?”

“If it’s all right with you, I was thinking of leaving on Monday.”

“Monday? Ah that is why you arranged our date on Sunday.” Jeong Jin Wu nodded as though he had solved a mystery case. Then he sighed. “It’s fine, Go on Monday. And next time you don’t have to leave notes. I already know what to do. I’m your research assistant.” Jeong Jin Wu chuckled again.

From outside the window, the wind noticed Jeong Jin Wu and Eun Ok enjoying each other’s company by the single lamp on the desk, and respectfully left them in peace.

Though the characterizations, plot, and structure are well done, the prose reads a little repetitive in its rhythm. My hunch is that the issue lies in the translation, but I haven’t read enough Korean to know for sure. I started to feel the lack of participle clauses and I wonder if the translation could have been more idiomatic to vary the rhythm of the prose more.

Part 2: On The Discourse Around The Book 

In short, this is a novel with compelling characters tackling familiar problems, written with emotional nuance and interesting metaphors. But you wouldn’t think it to read the other reviews, which bemoan its heavy-handed propaganda. Part of me wonders how these impressions might vary if the reader was blind to the novel's origin — it was written by an author from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the author is in good standing with the state. A blind read is of course impossible — the characters are Korean, the world changing around them is clearly a maturing post-socialist revolution society, and the chapter in which Jeong Jin Wu delivers his historical materialist thesis on the institution of marriage is a dead giveaway as to the author’s Marxist education. (I found him falling in love with his wife as she devastatingly critiques his thesis to be quite endearing.)

Yes, there is a moral to the story, and yes, it aligns with what their country views to be a social good. We see how the family is the basic unit of society and must be mutually supportive. We see how corruption hurts its victims. We see how people should study and improve themselves, advance science and technology and the arts, not only for their own self-fulfillment but because it leads to a more thriving society. Are these principles the other reviewers disagree with? Are these values scary, cruel, oppressive?

What’s more, I found myself wondering how these other reviewers fare with works like Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. That book certainly hits you over the head with morals: the family is the basic unit of society and must be mutually supportive (so don’t just marry the first pretty thing you fall in love with); corruption hurts its victims; improve yourself and spend within your means. These are good morals to impart for a stable society, and the state and other institutions of the anglosphere have rewarded Dickens handsomely for it. Though I’ll give Friend the edge for its optimism that through hard work, a better — more creative, more technologically advanced — society is possible.

Review: Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's The Odyssey

I do a little technical writing translation here and there for a website, after naively answering "yes" to "Hey, you speak French and know this one specific scientific domain, don't you?" I've since learned it's one sort of thing to carry a conversation or write a technical report in a language, and quite another sort of thing to faithfully translate both the tone and the content of words written by someone else within the limits of a restrictive character count.

Humbled by this experience, I was fascinated by Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's The Odyssey, a retelling in contemporary language arranged in iambic pentameter matching the line count of the original poem. These stylistic choices no doubt created quite the linguistic puzzle, but I loved the thought she put behind it, laid out in her translator's note:

The use of noncolloquial or archaizing linguistic register can blind readers to the real, inevitable and vast gap between the Greek original and any modern translation. My use of contemporary language—rather than the English of a generation or two ago—is meant to remind readers that this text can engage us in a direct way, and also that it is genuinely ancient.

She also took a thoughtful approach to how to portray moral values in this very ancient text in a modern, understandable way.

Translation always, necessarily, involves interpretation; there is no such thing as a translation that provides anything like a transparent window through which a reader can see the original. (...)

Because The Odyssey has become such a foundational text in our educational system and in our imagination of Western history, I believe it is particularly important for the translator to think through and tease out its values, and to see the reader to see the cracks and fissures in its constructed fantasy.

This reconsideration of beliefs and mores made it fun to compare other translations, particularly when the poem dealt with feminist topics or relationships between the elite aristocrats and the slaves or the peasants. Here's an example of one of my favourite passages by Wilson, foiled against one by Alexander Pope (1725). The gods have staged an intervention, insisting Calypso allow Odysseus to leave her island, where he has been her captive for seven years.

Wilson's:

You cruel, jealous gods! You bear a grudge 

whenever any goddess takes a man 

to sleep with as a lover in her bed. 

Just so the gods who live at ease were angry 

when rosy-fingered Dawn took up Orion, 

and from her golden throne, chaste Artemis

attacked and killed him with her gentle arrows.

Demeter with the cornrows in her hair

indulged her own desire, and she made love 

with Iasion in triple-furrowed fields

till Zeus found out, hurled flashing flame and killed him.

So now, you male gods are upset with me 

for living with a man. A man I saved! 

Zeus pinned his ship and with his flash of lightning

smashed it to pieces. All his friends were killed 

out on the wine-dark sea. This man alone,

clutching the keel, was swept by wind and wave, 

and came here, to my home. I cared for him

and loved him, and I vowed to set him free

from time and death forever.

Pope:

“Ungracious gods! with spite and envy cursed!
Still to your own ethereal race the worst!
Ye envy mortal and immortal joy,
And love, the only sweet of life destroy,
Did ever goddess by her charms engage
A favour’d mortal, and not feel your rage?
So when Aurora sought Orion’s love,
Her joys disturbed your blissful hours above,
Till, in Ortygia Dian’s winged dart
Had pierced the hapless hunter to the heart,
So when the covert of the thrice-eared field
Saw stately Ceres to her passion yield,
Scarce could Iasion taste her heavenly charms,
But Jove’s swift lightning scorched him in her arms.
And is it now my turn, ye mighty powers!
Am I the envy of your blissful bowers?
A man, an outcast to the storm and wave,
It was my crime to pity, and to save;
When he who thunders rent his bark in twain,
And sunk his brave companions in the main,
Alone, abandon’d, in mid-ocean tossed,
The sport of winds, and driven from every coast,
Hither this man of miseries I led,
Received the friendless, and the hungry fed;
Nay promised (vainly promised) to bestow
Immortal life, exempt from age and woe.

Wilson's translation highlights the agency of the goddesses (compare "indulged her own desire" with "to her passion yield"), emphasizing the double standards the famously promiscuous gods hold towards the goddesses. Calypso's interest in Odysseus is portrayed more as born of love versus an interest born of charity and pity, tinging her enraged censure of the gods with a little more heartbreak.

Another comparison of translations, this time spoken from the perspective of Odysseus' (eye-rollingly) loyal slave upon their reunion, on the subject of the suitors:

Wilson: 

We suffer / in bitter toil for these white-tusked pigs, / while others eat the food we labor for, / and give us nothing.

Samuel Butler (1900):

We have had trouble enough this long time feeding pigs, while others reap the fruit of our labour.

Pope:

For great and many are the griefs we bear, / While those who from our labours heap their board / Blaspheme their feeder and forget their lord.

The focus of Wilson's translation here is on the hardships of the slaves. Butler's is a substantially milder version of Wilson's. In Pope's, these lines serve as a sort of background chorus to emphasize how much the suitors shame Odysseus in his absence.

Reading the text, I felt very conscious that it was a translation. Although the story and the language were both familiar, it had an alien feel to it. There was a lot of unusual imagery ("Dawn's rosy fingers", "wine-dark sea"). There was an inordinate amount of time precisely detailing exactly how each sacrifice to the gods was made. It also felt very apparent that The Odyssey was first and foremost an orally performed epic. Key plot points were repeated several times over—presumably in case the poem wasn't performed in its entirety or someone missed something on a trip to the washroom. Unimportant characters were given a lot of inconsequential backstory—perhaps tying in the events and characters of the story to popular contemporary tales?

And what of the story itself? Classics are funny; you think you've absorbed a reasonably faithful understanding of the text based on triangulation of pop culture references. Sometimes it works out; the various works inspired by Pride & Prejudice provide a pretty good picture for what you'll find following the famous phrase "It is a truth universally acknowledged". On the other hand, pop culture is a terrible coordinate system for Frankenstein and it is similarly a poor mirror for The Odyssey.

I was surprised by how little of The Odyssey was sea monsters and sirens. Indeed of the 24 "books" that divide the poem, only books 5-13 relate to Odysseus' wanderings. This part of the poem starts in medias res, and follows Odysseus for an adventure or two in the third person, until he finds an eager audience to listen to his tale, allowing him to catch us up to his exploits since the Battle of Troy in the first person. This part of the poem felt a little like a musical; characters are given extensive monologue time to impress upon the audience just how impressive (or not impressive) they find Odysseus, while the plot moves from event to event with tenuous or circumstantial links between problems and resolutions. I was surprised at how much the Coen Brother's O Brother Where Art Thou really nailed the tone of this part of the book.

The remaining nearly two thirds of the book have a more forward momentum sort of plot, but it wasn't at all what I expected from The Odyssey. It was your basic vengeance story. The suitors courting Odysseus's wife Penelope are cartoonishly selfish and irredeemable. Odysseus' slaves and dog are obsequiously, irrationally, loyal to him. There are dozens of long scenes dedicated to everyone from Odysseus' son Telemachus to the slave swine-herders to the gods themselves wailing about how much the suitors disrespect Odysseus. There's an odd scene in which a disguised Odysseus is humiliated by the suitors, seemingly just to sweeten his revenge and his displays of superior bowman-ship. This all culminates in a bloody, gruesome, merciless slaughter of the suitors and the slave women who slept with them. The story was reined in from veering into vengeance porn only by virtue of Penelope being a fascinating character and her eventual reunion with Odysseus being really quite sweet. (For the nuanced portrayal of Penelope, I assume I have much to thank Wilson for.)

The main theme linking Odysseus' wanderings and his vengeance was the idea of how you treat guests. Penelope's suitors overstay their welcome and eat their way through Odysseus' wealth. Calypso violates hospitality expectations in the other direction, hosting Odysseus and lavishing him with gifts but refusing to let him leave. Odysseus himself violates the sanctity of one's home; invading Polyphemus' peaceful abode, blinding him and stealing his sheep. Odysseus is a gracious, entertaining guest at Alcinous' palace, and Alcinous inexplicably rewards him with mountains of treasure.

Odysseus is not particularly sympathetic; Wilson translates the opening lines of the epic to describe his as "a complicated man", and "complicated" really captures her portrayal of him.

I'll end my review here with one more quote from Wilson's Translator's Note that I think summarizes what makes this such an interesting read.

The gendered metaphor of the "faithful" translation, whose worth is always secondary to that of a male-authored original, acquires a particular edge in the context of a translation by a woman of The Odyssey, a poem that is deeply invested in female fidelity and male dominance.

Review: The White Castle by Orhan Pamuk

I picked up this book because I thought it would be interesting to read some literature from a non-Anglo/Northern European author, and because the audiobook was available from my library. I was caught quite by surprise by the role the plague played in this book - what timing to read it during the coronavirus pandemic. It was a little uncanny to see concerns of social distancing/contagious disease play out, written from the 1980s and set in the 1600s yet read in 2020: people anxiously following social distancing norms, other people decrying the whole thing as a hoax, others frantically trying to trace down all data they could in hopes of understanding the disease, the strange love and resentment that builds from being cooped up so closely with another person, the fear of a second wave, the concerns about economic collapse if the markets are not re-opened...

The White Castle reminded me of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in that it was chiefly about a relationship between two men, that ranges from a hierarchical relationship, to one of collaboration and productive research, to an antagonistic relationship. Jonathan Strange does go through his "candles in heads" phase of madness and The White Castle's Hoja goes through a similar "why am I who I am" search. However what I love so much about Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the dry sense of humor, the strange fantasy world, and the absurdity of some parts. The White Castle lacked these elements. Further, there are ways I worry I am like Mr Norrell, ways I wish I was more like Jonathan Strange, and parts of Jonathan Strange I see in myself. Except for a drive to understand myself, and an appreciation for science, I didn't really identify with the narrator nor with Hoja. Because the story was so driven by character arcs and so little by plot, I think this diminished my enjoyment of the book.

The question of identity at the end of the book was interesting. I think I like the interpretation better that it was the Italian man that returned to Italy. The actions of the "narrator" work better if carried out by Hoja (and indeed also the actions of the sovereign, who seemed to take great joy in understanding two men as independent and very different people, also suggest as much). It doesn't make sense to me that the Italian man would seek company in a slave.

The pace was meditative, but not tediously slow. It was a relaxing read, if not gripping.

Review: We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson

 Rating: 5/5

Many of my favourite novels have fantastic opening sentences (Alice Through The Looking Glass and Pride And Prejudice come to mind). I picked up We Have Always Lived In The Castle exactly because of its opening lines.

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise, I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cap mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead...

 If the playful morbidness of that doesn't draw you in, it probably isn't the book for you.

I loved Merricat as a narrator. The way she views the world around her was so unique and interesting. The central mystery - the sugar pot, the blackberries, the murder - was revealed well, and the story was well-paced and tidily wrapped up. A perfect modern gothic fairytale.

Review: The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell

 Rating: 4/5 stars

The Old Drift is a sweeping epic, tracing three family lines through three generations, exploring inter-generational inheritance of the effects of trauma, capitalism and colonialism. Woven into these stories is the history of Zambia, a nation similarly struggling with these wounds. Reading The Old Drift, I get the sense the Namwali Serpell feels both loving pride and intense despair about the state of her country, and has poured so much of herself into her first novel. She has a lot to say - about politics, motherhood, sociology, racism, sexuality, science, disappointment, identity, capitalism, global warming, love..... It's a tall order to successfully conduct such a symphony of ideas, and although I think at times the individual melodies get overpowered or off-tempo, it's still a very impressive book.

The three grandmothers each have some supernatural feature. One woman grows hair all over her face and body at a magically rapid pace. Leaving behind a sheltered childhood in post-World War Italy, raised by a brokenhearted mother who was worried her daughter would be stoned as a monster, she starts a new life in Zambia with her lover. Another grandmother's promising tennis career is interrupted with inexplicable blindness. She, too, makes her way to Zambia with her lover, but her immigration is instead an escape from her parent's disapprobation of her interracial relationship. The third grandmother is Zambian born and raised, and her brilliance and sense of adventure bring her to join Mukuka Nkoloso's team of revolutionaries [The Old Drift is impeccably well-researched - some of this research into Nkoloso went into a great New Yorker article]. She falls in love, becomes pregnant, and is abandoned by all her friends and family. This despair causes her to weep endlessly for decades, the skin under her eyes scarring.

The members of the mother generation escape magical distinction, but struggle to set their roots and thrive in the soil they are planted in by their mothers. They grapple with issues like being treated as a commodity by an unloving and ambitious aunt, sex work and homelessness, forming a sense of identity as an idly rich white woman in the expat enclave, an unfaithful spouse, miscarriage, AIDS, and loneliness. Their stories touch every now and then, but it isn't until the grandchildren's generation that the three storylines really merge.

The stories of the grandchildren stretch from the 2010s into the 2020s, and revolve around several fictional technological advances and how these inventions impact a developing country: smartphone successors surgical embedded into the palms of the user (exploited by the government for spying on and controlling its citizens), vaccines against AIDS (tested on brown, poor bodies without their consent), tiny drone swarms (exploited by the government for warfare, spying, controlling its citizens, and used by anti-government revolutionary forces).

The story concludes with intentionally loose ends - the final chapter literally ends halfway through a sentence. I suppose this conveys that history is never over; the offspring of the grandchildren will still be fighting the aftermath of colonialism. Still, I found that I hadn't quite had time to get invested in the final story arch, in which the grandchildren, in a move of rebellion against the government, attempt to take down the dam built by one of their grandfathers. And so the abruptness of the book ending where it did didn't quite have the impact it could have. Nor did I feel fully satisfied by the last sightings of all the mothers and grandmothers.

Parts of the book are incredibly depressing. Every relationship, no matter how strong they started, fizzled or rotted. It's a bleak look at love in general, and particularly one in which the central conceit is that each main character must have a child to narrate the next chapter. I found myself dreading the pages where the characters started to fall in love or found out they were pregnant. Beyond that, some characters - Matha and Sylvia in particular - have so much horribleness thrown their way that I found myself wondering what the point of showing so much misery was. 

Still, beyond these issues, I loved the writing. There were some lyrically beautiful passages:

Can mosquitoes and humans live peacefully together, can we forge an uneasy truce? Hover around each other enough and symbiosis sets in. Over moons, you’ll grow immune, and our flus will move through you – a mild fever and maybe a snooze. This balance can even come to your rescue, defend you against rank intruders. As Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe once said, the lowliest creature, the tiny udzudzu, is what kept the imperialists at bay! Thus when the whites first swooned to the tropics, they saw that the blacks never fell: the raging calenture that gripped the bazungu passed over the huts of the bantu. This place was The White Man’s Grave. But it wasn’t bad lands that caused their downfall – it happened on the seas as well. They say La Amistad’s crew caught a fever, while the black mutineers were spared it. Was it African skin or sweat? It was neither. It was us, and a matter of time. Reckon the wars, how a battleground festers: the British armies in the American South, the Japanese in the Pacific. Even the fall of the Roman Empire was due in part to our diseases. In every case, the nature of grace is that one side is simply more used to us. Call it invasion or world exploration: either way, it upsets this balance. Your desire to conquer, to colonise others, is both too fixed and too free. Nothing escapes your dull dialectic: either it takes a village to live or to each his own to survive. Even your debate on the best way to befalls on either side of this blade. The social contract or individual free will; the walls of a commune must keep us close or capital must run rampant. That’s how you froze your long Cold War, with this endless, mindless divide.

Other passages were just perfect little needles:

She was mainly struck by how small she looked in her reflection. She didn’t feel that small from the inside.

What sort of preparation, what sort of entertainment does a dying man want? Last things? Joseph had no idea what those would be – he was still obsessed with first things.

All she wanted was to be at home in bed, curled in a ball, alone and quietly bleeding.

During his time at university, Ronald had learned that ‘history’ was the word the English used for the record of every time a white man encountered something he had never seen and promptly claimed it as his own, often renaming it for good measure. History, in short, was the annals of the bully on the playground.

But Sibilla’s marriage had long felt like a handbag that she had neglected to empty out, that she still carried around even though she kept her money, handkerchief and comb elsewhere on her person. 

The baby started to cry again. Matha had never considered that being female would thwart her so, that it would be a hurdle she had to jump every time she wanted to learn something: to read a book, to shout the answers, to make a bomb, to love a man, to fight for freedom. She had never thought Ba Nkoloso, Godfrey and Nkuka would each abandon her in turn to poverty and lone motherhood. Matha bounced her baby in vain. Go to sleep, baby, she whimpered. Shut up, baby. She had never imagined that to be a woman was always, somehow, to be a banishable witch. Now, as her baby wept for hunger and as she herself wept distractedly – weeping was just what she did now, who she was – Matha felt that dawning shock that comes when you look at yourself and see a person you once might have pitied

Each character had a distinct voice - not an easy task for a novel with nine main characters. 

Many of the dialogues were fairly in-depth discussions of big concepts. Capitalism versus Marxism. Racism. Free tuition. The right way to effect societal change. These Socratic dialogues feel like characters naturally exploring a topic shaping their lives, rather than the author attempting to argue her own views. (Indeed, at times, I wish the author came down a little harder on what she believes.)

‘The protests,’ he said. ‘It’s crazy right now. End-times shit.’ She laughed so hard that it rocked her onto her back. ‘Are you joking?’ she asked the sky. ‘That’s why I wanted to go! They’re frikkin trying to do something! Fight the power and that!’ ‘How about fight the power cuts?’ He was surprised to hear himself echoing his grandfather. ‘Why make free education a priority when people still don’t have food or electricity or running water?’ ‘They did it in Chile!’ she exclaimed, sitting up again and crossing her legs. ‘They made it completely free. Uni for everyone, paid for by those corporate oil companies and shit.’ ‘Are you sure you want to use Chile as the example of democratic progress?’ ‘Who said anything about democracy, men? Democracy’s bankrupt. People from the West shout “democracy” but they’re vampires, sucking our resources. Bloody capitalist stooges.’ ‘Stooges?’ he chuckled. ‘You really are Zambian. So what, you give all your money away?’ ‘I’m Marxist,’ she said with disgust. ‘I’m not stupid.’

 I opened the book knowing almost nothing about Zambia, and I closed it having been inspired to read up on its history, its traditional clothing, its cuisine, its language. Serpell did a fantastic job at painting the country and its people. The books hold on me didn't end upon putting it down; various parts of the book have rattled around in my mind since I read it. And I think that is the mark of a successful book.

Review: Lady Susan by Jane Austen

 Rating: 3/5 stars

I have a fondness for a good female villain. Yzma in particular holds a special place in my heart. But The Little Mermaid's Ursula, A Song of Ice And Fire's Melisandre and Cersei, Mean Girl's Regina George, Morgan Le Fey from the Arthurian legend, all rank as some of my favourite characters. Many of these women operate at the boundary (or just outside of it) of social acceptability, and their flaunting of roles ascribed to women, or their ability to play with these norms to meet their own needs, is often thrilling and satisfying. 

Lady Susan fits perfectly in this category of wicked women. She is charismatic, confident in her power and willing to reach out and take what she wants.

I have made him sensible of my power, and can now enjoy the pleasure of triumphing over a mind prepared to dislike me, and prejudiced against all my past actions.

It was delicious to see this sort of character portrayed by Austen, whose main characters have otherwise ranged from the churchmouse-like Fanny (Mansfield Park) to the spirited but still sensible and moral Elizabeth Bennet. 

Lady Susan aside, the plot was fairly simple and short. I had hoped that Fredrica would turn out to indeed be a wicked woman. Lady Susan holds Fredrica in so little regard, and Catherine Vernon considers her to be so poorly misjudged by Lady Susan. I think it would have been a great use of the epistolary format of the novel, and played in well with the theme of trusting someone's word versus their reputation. Fredrica turning out to indeed be a perfectly normal woman that was ill-treated by her mother was a little disappointing and boring.

The ending breaks from the epistolary format to general prose as the narrator accounts for what happens to all the characters. I found the tone shift a little jarring at first. Still, Jane Austen's prose is very enjoyable. I get the sense that, with this book, written somewhat later in her life, Austen perhaps had something to say about the idea of women's beauty or desirability fading with age.

 Miss Mainwaring; who, coming to town, and putting herself to an expense in clothes which impoverished her for two years, on purpose to secure him, was defrauded of her due by a woman ten years older than herself

Review: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

 Rating: 5/5 stars

I left Pride and Prejudice as the last Jane Austen novel in my Summer/Fall 2020 Austen binge. I've read it several times: once in high school, a couple times during my undergraduate degree. I thought that it probably wouldn't hold up against Emma or Persuasion - my two favourites so far. After all, Pride and Prejudice was from Austen's "early" period. Presumably, I thought, it would be like Sense and Sensibility or Northanger Abbey, a delightful story about charming and slightly flawed heroines whose adventures portray the ridiculousness of socialites. The satire wouldn't have yet matured into the dark, sharpened censure of the gentry found at the heart of Persuasion, I assumed. The character study would probably not be as detailed as in Emma, nor would the protagonist's point of view shape the reader's interpretation of events to the same extent, resulting in an interesting reveal.

None of these assumptions that I brought with me to this reading were necessarily wrong. Austen's social critiques are pointed and varied: women's rights to property and inheritance; women's social reputation being particularly precarious versus that of men; the wealthy/landed being just as often rude and cruel as their less fortunate countrymen. However, I read optimism in her satire in Pride and Prejudice. For all the narcissism, frivolity, greed and obsequiousness in the Mr Wickhams, Lady Catherines, and Mr Collinses of the world, there is a trust that there will be kind, thoughtful, generous, empathetic Jane Bennets and Mr Bingleys and Mr Darcys to even things out. There isn't the same sense of social rot and decay of the gentry class, as explored in Persuasion.

So I wondered, as I devoured Pride and Prejudice over the course of just three days, why do I love this novel so much? In part, I think it is because Elizabeth is so relatable and so delightful. She's smart, playful, bold, thoughtful, caring, idealistic. She experiences things familiar to me and in a similar way: her bristling at being wrongly assessed by Mr Darcy, her mortification at her parents' and sisters' behaviour, her love for her family, her navigating a social scene packed with people richer or more educated than her.

In part, I think love this novel particularly because, I think alone of Austen's novels, the love interest has a significant character arc too. Mr Darcy is socially awkward and proud - another set of characteristics I can identify with! - and learns to overcome his shyness and to see the world through a different perspective. Yes, the ending is a little bit too "fairy tale." But I didn't care, I was just excited to see Lizzie and Darcy together.

Finally, the dialogues are just so memorable. The adversarial flirting between Lizzie Bennet and Mr Darcy, and their fiery argument during the proposal scene, are particularly fun. But I equally loved many other scenes: the opening dialogue where Mr and Mrs Bennet discuss going to see Mr Bingley. Mr Darcy's rant about "accomplished" women (a thread Austen picks up also in Emma and in Sense and Sensibility), Miss Bingley's failure at flirting with Mr Darcy as he writes a letter to his sister, the dinners at Lady Catherine's. Between reading the book a few times, and watching the movies and tv shows based on the novel, so much of the dialogue and the characters were surprisingly familiar to me. Maybe that is why I loved this read so much - it was returning to old friends.

Review: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

 Rating: 4/5 stars

I love Sense and Sensibility for being a story of female friendship between two rather different women. Despite disagreement and disappointment in each other, Elinor and Marianne remain loving and supportive. It seems rare, even in 2020, to have such a detailed character study of two women that remain friends throughout. Elinor and Marianne feel like 'real' people to me, despite being personifications of the themes of the novel, sense and sensibility, or being guided by rationality (sometimes to the detriment of emotional happiness) versus being guided by emotion. These two sisters as foils of each other made me think a little of the Zoey versus Zelda dichotomy proposed in Bojack Horseman (itself a parody of fictional personality clustering paradigms like Hogwarts Houses or Sex and the City characters; I'm an Elinor, a Zoey, a Ravenclaw, a Miranda).

I also enjoyed Jane Austen's critique of idleness in the gentry. It's a more gentle version of the censure of the idle rich that Austen penned fifteen or twenty years later in Persuasion. Although not wealthy, Elinor and Marianne surprise their acquaintances by being always preoccupied with art or music or reading. Edmund's character arc is about him recognizing that his misplaced love for Lucy Steele is actually a product of his idleness, and then him finally choosing a profession and becoming a productive, if less wealthy, gentleman. ("Instead of having anything to do, instead of having any profession chosen for me, or being allowed to choose any myself, I returned home to be completely idle; I had therefore nothing in the world to do, but to fancy myself in love.") The Middletons are respectable, apparently happy rich folk, with nothing to do except hunt when it is nice weather (Mr. Middleton), mother their children (Mrs. Middleton), and arrange dinner parties. 

I thought the framing of motherhood as Lady Middleton's sole occupation being a form of idleness was particularly interesting. In Race, Women & Class, Angela Davis discusses in detail how during this period of history, well-off women had many of their responsibilities removed from them by increasing industrialization, and that this reduction in their contribution to their households increased sexism towards women. Upper class women were restricted to the role of doting mother, with little to do to occupy their idle days. Mrs. Jennings similarly does little except care for her daughters and attempt to marry off her single female acquaintances. Mrs. John Dashwood breaks this mold a little, manipulating her husband into carrying out her wishes by expressing everything in terms of the potential benefit or harm (however tangential!) to her child.

Austen contrasts these limited social roles allowed to wealthy women with real social and economic power held by women. Mrs. Ferrars disowns Edmund when he refuses to break his engagement to Lucy Steele. Mr. Willoughby's aunt similarly cuts him off financially when she hears of his affair with Eliza. Inheritance and wealth is arbitrary, precarious, and its victims are not just women (like the impoverished Miss Dashwoods).

I thought Sense and Sensibility was notable for being one of the earliest examples of mansplaining in literature I can think of. Mr. Dashwood is so unable to imagine Colonel Brandon's generosity towards Edmund that he insists Elinor is mistaken and that she must be mistaken, Colonel Brandon clearly bequeathed the parsonage only temporarily. Elinor has to quite firmly insist that, as the person entrusted by Colonel Brandon to convey the offer to Edmund, she is quite aware of the terms of the agreement. Her begrudgingly accepts this explanation without really apologizing.

Sense and Sensibility was a little more overtly comedic than Persuasion or Mansfield Park. For example, there was a scene of Elinor and Mrs Jennings misunderstanding each other regarding what exactly Colonel Brandon discussed with Elinor. I enjoyed the fairly broad cast of somewhat ridiculous characters: Mr. John Dashwood and his conversations with his wife and with Elinor were a highlight of these. Lucy Steele's sly meanness coated in friendly civility was also amusing.

As much as I loved Elinor and Marianne's character arcs, I found those of their gentlemen rather lacking. I thought Edmund was rather flat and unremarkable (although I might be a little prejudiced against religious characters). Colonel Brandon seemed like a kind, thoughtful man, if you can get past his whole mooning-over-women-half-his-age-from-a-distance thing (a taller order in 2020 than 1820).

Review: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

 Rating: 2/5 stars

I finished Northanger Abbey wondering if I was particularly disposed to identifying with Austen heroines, but in Mansfield Park's Fanny Price I discovered at last a protagonist that I never really "got." For the first two thirds of the novel, Fanny does little more than exist as a fly on the wall, meditating disapprovingly as her cousins and their friends flirt, rehearse a play, and discuss religion and landscaping. Fanny finds much to dislike, and takes little joy in anything in life outside of her relationship with her brother William, who sees her briefly in between sea voyages, and being cared for by her cousin Edmund Bertram. Unlike Northanger Abbey's Catherine Morland, who delighted in dancing and books and discovering the world, or Emma's Miss Woodhouse, who enjoys art and wit and society, Fanny Price just seems like a bit of a dour, passive wet blanket. Even her love for Edmund is expressed predominantly in terms of acquiescent sadness as she watches him develop feelings for Miss Crawford (rather than Catherine's consuming giddiness for Mr Tilney or Emma's playful admiration for Mr Knightly). The climax of the novel is in Fanny quietly standing firm in her resolution to not marry Mr Crawford, who she views as improper and amoral. And I highly value convictions and a sense of right and wrong - in myself, in my friends, in my fictional characters - but I don't have patience for people who lack passion.

The fallout to Fanny's heroic decision not to marry a charming and wealthy man felt a little facile. Everyone who was superficial or improper or mean to Fanny met an unpleasant end, unless they were able to recognize quickly enough how right and proper Fanny was to refuse Mr Crawford. The few people who were nice to Fanny and valued her had good fortune and enjoyable lives.

Austen asks "what makes people good?" But I don't feel she satisfactorily provides an answer. Fanny's cousins, Julia and Maria, become silly and superficial women because their father cares only that they "check the boxes" of being accomplished young ladies without ensuring that they are actually godfearing young ladies. Maria is particularly spoiled (and thus meets a particularly demeaning fate) because her Aunt Norris spoils her and views her absolutely without faults. Sir Thomas Bertram pats himself on the back for polishing Fanny into being an elegant young lady, but notes that her beauty is her own. But what makes Edmund a considerate and conscientious young man? He was raised in the same toxic household as his fatuous, ostentatious cousins. Most of Fanny's siblings are self-centered, but what makes her sister Susan immune to these endemic flaws? Are some of us simply born with strong moral character while the rest of us must hope that our parents and guardians instill in us a strong sense of ethics?

 The other themes in Mansfield Park seemed a little dated and uninteresting. One of the key concepts explored was the role and the respectability of the clergy - which has changed quite a bit! The position held by the improper, hedonistic characters is that men of the cloth are hypocritical and that their only ambition is to minimize their duties. The position held by the moral characters is that the clergy plays an essential role in the health of a community and are smart and self-sacrificing. The "bad guys" believe that no one really cares about religion, and that everyone simple attends for the sake of performing piety, and that church bells are a bit of a nuisance. The "good guys" long for regular chapel services to be held in Southerton Hall and that all the servants ought to attend. I found myself rather more sympathetic towards the arguments presented by the villains.

Another concept was that of remodelling and landscaping. Some types of landscaping are virtuous. Some are silly and superficial. I was a little amused that privileged people 200 years ago were as disposed to spending an entire dinner discussing landscaping as they are now. These are not my favourite types of dinner parties. Still, conversations like these can be delightful ways of exploring characters! 

However, the cast of Mansfield Park was not as colorful or as familiar or otherwise as interesting as the casts in some of Austen's other work. The personal flaws lampooned in Mansfield Park also just seem to present themselves differently now than they did then. There are still the checked-out parents, like Sir and Lady Bertram, miserly people like Mrs Norris, and ladder-climbing superficial women like Miss Crawford and Maria Bertram. But I didn't find these flaws as poignantly presented and explored as, for example, those of Sir Walter Elliot and Mary Musgrove of Persuasion.

If there are two themes in the books I've read in the last three or four months, it would be the novels of Jane Austen and nonfiction exploring the fallouts of Colonialism and slavery (for example: Race, Women and Class or The Autobiography of Malcolm X). I had some hopes that Mansfield Park, as the only work by Jane Austen that references slavery and the colonies, to be an interesting dovetailing of these two themes. However, it played an extremely minor background role, and I feel that discussions of portrayal of slavery in this book are really trying very hard to make mountains out of molehills. Is Fanny/Austen pro-slavery? Anti-slavery? You could read the handful of lines that reference the issue either way depending on your desired thesis.

I still enjoyed Jane Austen's prose, and her ability to design a scene and portray the thoughts and emotions of her characters. There were plot points I enjoyed - Fanny making her own little space in the East Room, and finally being allowed to have a fire in the hearth there, for example. But if I were in the mood for some Jane Austen, I think I would pick up perhaps any other book but this one.

Review: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

 Rating: 4/5 stars

Am I a particularly Austen-like woman, or is Austen so astute at creating realistic, relatable characters that most people find some parts of themselves in her heroines? (See my reviews of Emma and Persuasion, for example.)

I loved Catherine's dramatic imagination, her loyalty to her friends and her innocence/naiveté regarding General Tilney and Isabella's social ladder climbing ambitions. My heart rose and fell with hers as she discovered the wide(r) world of Bath and made new friends, discovered too late the social impropriety of riding in an open carriage, learned of her acquaintance manipulatively canceling her social plans or lying to her to spend more time with him, received an invitation to Northanger Abbey and was discovered poking around her friend's deceased mother's apartments. If the specifics of my own teen years were really quite different, the general tensions and reactions Austen portrayed were so vividly familiar.

John Thorpe and Isabella Thorpe were delightful antagonists. There is a particular type of pompous self-absorbed twit from whom I've previously had to disentangle myself from conversation with and it is nice to have a literary reference for the archetype... Seeing the hints of Isabella's upcoming betrayal through Catherine's unwitting and overly generous eyes was fun. Mrs Allen and Mrs Thorpe's supposed "conversations" in which they both discussed their own interests at each other rather than with each other was memorable.

Henry Tilney left a lot to be desired as a love interest. I found him rather unbearably smug and overly pleased with his own wit, and rather condescending. Still, Catherine's being so in love with him was just so adorable that I still shipped it.

In the present instance, she confessed and lamented her want of knowledge, declared that she would give anything in the world to be able to draw; and a lecture on the picturesque immediately followed, in which his instructions were so clear that she soon began to see beauty in everything admired by him, and her attention was so earnest that he became perfectly satisfied of her having a great deal of natural taste. He talked of foregrounds, distances, and second distances – side-screens and perspectives – lights and shades; and Catherine was so hopeful a scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a landscape.

Overall, the plot of Northanger Abbey was quite simple relative to her other works. The social tensions were less layered than in Emma. Social critiques were narrower in scope and the character flaws of the protagonists and antagonists were less complex than those of Emma or Persuasion. It was fun to watch Austen aim her satire at literature and pop culture. While many of the tropes she skewers (wives locked up and murdered, manuscripts hidden in surprising old chests, spooky houses) are very familiar, I got the sense that some (many?) references went a little over my head. Still, I don't feel the need to brush up on centuries-old gothic novels - Jane Austen's satire about an extraordinarily ordinary teen girl delighted nevertheless.

Review: Emma by Jane Austen

 Rating: 4/5 stars

"Emma" is a dramatic romance about a girl named "Jane".

There's a somewhat traditional romantic story line in Emma, in which two young people fall in love and become engaged, and yet hide their engagement out of fear of familial censure due to their different in class status and wealth. However, the strain of keeping the relationship secret makes the two lovers miserable. In a dramatic series of events involving a lost break-up letter, a frantic horse ride across the countryside and a sudden death of a parent, the two young people re-unite and come forth about their relationship.

Nearly all of this story line occurs off-screen, however, and involves Jane, not the titular heroine.

I loved this sort of bait-and-switch. It was effective at demonstrating how our perceptions of people are influenced by our own personal goals or struggles or the partial information we receive about the world. Just as Frank Churchill was quite sure Emma had sussed out his secret engagement (given his own preoccupation with his forbidden love), the reader thinks the story will be a romance arch of some sort centered around Emma and including also Mr Churchill, Mr Knightly and/or Harriet. Instead, these relationship tensions dissipate easily, with the climax of the novel really peaking instead at the discovery that Emma, all of Highbury, and the reader themselves have been much mistaken about two major characters and the meaning of dozens of social interactions.

Austen does such a good job at portraying all the little nuances and the subtext of interpersonal relationships and conversation. Through the portrayal of a few people planning a party, for example, we get vivid character portraits and critique of social structure. There are some reviews of Emma on Goodreads that bemoan how many pages are spent discuss, for example, how to cook a particular cut of pig. And I want to moan back at them "but you see it's the way they talk about the cut of pig, through which we feel Emma's exasperation at suffering the overly chatty Miss Bates, and see Mr Woodhouse's arms-length paternalism and hypochondriac anxiety, and we feel the claustrophobic, limited set of acceptable activities available to Emma as a woman of her station and...."

One of the things I loved about Persuasion was Austen's bitingly sarcastic prose. I felt like this sort of authorial voice was de-emphasized in Emma, in favor of showing Emma's reactions to events instead. In consequence, dialogue played a much larger role in demonstrating the various follies of the rich. Perhaps because of this difference, I felt like the cast of Emma was somewhat more lovingly portrayed by Austen. Although Mrs Enton was delightfully insufferable in her condescending sense of superiority!

Another possible effect of this difference was that Emma is much more a character study and less a social critique. To some extent, this is in its favour. Emma is a fantastic portrayal of the difficulties in navigating social relationships as a young woman, when you feel you know enough to play as an adult, and yet you still haven't really grasped viewing things from other people's perspectives, nor have you mastered reflecting on your own emotions. (I enjoyed Emma reacting to something, thinking first of how Mr Knightly might react, and then thinking of how Mr Churchill might react, and then thinking how silly she is thinking always of Mr Churchill first - how crazy to be in love; during this part of the book, she of course thinks she is in love with Mr Churchill and not Mr Knightly).

To some extent, however, this makes Emma a little more limited. The "moral" of the story is that one shouldn't dream of marrying too far above one's social station. The book ends with us, and Emma, learning that Harriet is just a tradesman's bastard, and there for Emma was very wrong to have impeded her happily marrying a farmer. This "moral" translates somewhat poorly to today (or, if it doesn't, it ought to...). Charitably, one could think of Emma's meddling in Harriet's life (and the mirror, of Mrs Enton meddling in Jane's affairs) as a lesson in checking your privilege and not enforcing your standards of what "a good life" should be on people with different ways of lives. That is a lesson still relevant in 2020. Still, this ending leaves a bit of a sour taste, and was really my only reason I dropped my rating from 5 to 4.

Review: Persuasion by Jane Austen

 Rating: 4/5 stars

 Although I read and loved Pride and Prejudice in high school, I hadn't read Persuasion until now, and it is an interesting book to read at the age of thirty. Where Pride and Prejudice revolves around younger people blundering their way through new relationships, the cast of Persuasion are a little more experienced. Anne Ellis, having declined a proposal due to being too young, is still single some 8 or 9 years later. Other characters are widowed, looking for the second love of their life. Some have been married for a long time - a few very happily, the rest rather miserably. Through these characters, Austen explores how people change during their twenties. What acts can be forgiven? Can old relationships be rekindled? If I've presented Persuasion as being dry and academic, that is on me entirely - the characters are colorful and the prose is dripping with snark.

Somehow, Jane Austen's work became associated with romance for women, when her writing is closer to that of Dan Carlin than of Nora Roberts. I suppose it's because her incisive, acerbic commentary is centered around interpersonal relationships and the day-to-day concerns of the over-privileged and under-employed, rather than more "serious" topics like politics, war, or media. But in Persuasion, although there is the usual "will-they-won't-they" plot, Austen comments quite extensively on political matters.

One of the key themes is the decline of the aristocracy class, or the rise of the "self-made" men wealthy men. The skincare-obsessed and spendthrift Sir Walter perhaps personifies this critique of the useless navel-gazing of the gentry most starkly. He is foiled against Admiral Croft, who earned his wealth (albeit, as an instrument of brutal imperialism...) and is an upstanding gentleman with an enviably adorable relationship, and who finally did something about the draft in Sir Walter's estate's cupboards. "Productive" members of the gentry fare a little better than their more idle counterparts; Mrs Smith atones for her profligate past by industriously selling items she knits. One imagines that Austen sees herself in this class of privileged but productive aristocrats.

Feminism, or rather, questioning the existence of native differences between men and women, was thoughtfully presented. Mary Ellis decries that no one would judge a father for going to a dinner party while his child is sick, but that a mother is expected to stay home due to some presumed inborn ability to care for children that Mary doesn't recognize in herself. The resolution of the love story is spurred by Anne discussing with Captain Harville whether men and women are equally 'constant' in their love. If men and women love differently, is it due to social expectations, or due to biology, or due to (aristocratic) women having little other occupation? Austen also slyly suggests that the nature of women cannot be understood at all from books, because overwhelmingly books are written by men. I see you, Jane, and I appreciate you.