Bookraft

Ok Jane Austen fans, here is a departure - an Austen novel with deliberate comic bite. And given the delicious reading by Juliet Stevenson - this novel becomes an outright delight. It is the story of a 17 year old ex-tomboy and 3rd of 10 Morland children [papa is a Parson] - Catherine Morland and her first forays into society. Catherine's neighbours, the Allens have offered to chaperon Catherine on their visit to Bath with its balls, Prom Room, plays, and concerts. That is the setting to which is added some scoundrel women, philandering men and many social settings where all can show their marks and rankings in the World of Civility.

But first a caution. Can you imagine Jane Austen making tongue in cheek asides to "dear readers" about the nature of her heroine and some of the other dramatis personae ? Would you expect Ms. Austen to be not quite lampooning but shall we imply some marvelous gain-saying about her fellow writers, the Romantic and Gothic novelists that abound at the turn into the 19th century. But what makes this romance so fun is that Catherine Morland is a complete ingenue, barely having her legs in the social world of Bath but filled with pre-conceptions from her reading of the Soap Operas of the day - The Mysteries of Udolpho , The Italian, and Clermont among others.

Actually Catherine's Gothic "upbringing" gives her an inkling of the mischief that her "new and truest" friend, Isabella Thorpe, will reek on her and her eldest brother James Morland. The scenes at the ballroom and promenade are Austentaciously fine and hilariously rendered by the autor and here reader, Juliet Stevenson. And the true hero [and heroine], the Tilney's, are chips off the Austen Civil block . Let me repeat, this is an Austen heroine [and family] who brings a real revelation of who and what is truly admired in the always entertaining World of Jane Austen.