Bookraft

Northanger Abbey is one of the tartest and wittiest of Jane Austen's novels. It tells the story of an ingenue, Catherine Morland, who visits Bath [the Sandals Resort of the 19th century British upper class and a place that Jane's family moved to so there is a sense of "knowing well" all the Bathian social doings]. Catherine is a guest in her Bath trip of her neighbors, the Allans, at the tender age of 17. The brilliance of this rendition is the voicing by Juliet Stevenson of Catherine, buffoonish John Thorpe, his ever social scheming sister, Isabella Thorpe, and Catherine's vacuous chaperon Mrs Allan. And these are only the most delicious characters. They come off the pages as live and duplicitous manipulators in the case of the Thorpe duo - and an unsuspecting, wide-eyed naif [but who learns fast] in the heroine Catherine.

In fact the audio reading helps emphasize the wit and humor of the story - as Catherine meets her hero, Mr. Tilney, but is prevented from making the match by the quirks and machinations of events and Thorpean intrigues. Well now let me confess in the style of the direct asides employed by Ms. Jane Austen [and pray tell, I don't think you shall see so many in all of the rest of Ms. Austen's works] - there is a hilarious send up of contemporary fiction writers with an especially devilish rendering of the aberrations wreaked by Gothic novels popular in the day. Catherines visiting the Tilney residence at Northanger Abbey becomes a self-made novel scene of rapier-wit and satire. It is as if Ms Austen has stolen a scene straight out of Catherine's "most favorite novel", The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe. Catherine conjures out of her Udolpho readings the idea that murder and torture most foul has taken place in some of the dark, dank rooms of the Northanger Abbey. Then shamefacedly not once, not twice but thrice her imaginations prove comically implausible - and finally Catherine learns to tone down her novel-inspired cravings. And of course MS Austen is the exemplar of decorum as to whether or not Catherine's reading of Ann Radcliffe's Udolpho lead her heroine astray.

So Northanger Abbey is a comedy sketch of marvelous dexterity. Bold and obvious blunderbuss characters, a heroine just learning social sagacity, an almost too sympathetic hero [a foreshadowing of Mr. Knightley?], plus no less an active narrator than Ms. Jane Austen herself. Do enjoy the production, if you can.