Jane Austen is one of those big name authors who I feel like I should have read more of, but who always gets sidelined by whatever other author or genre I’m obsessed with when the time comes to choose my next book to read.
About five years ago, I read Pride and Prejudice. It was honestly pretty good and some of the characters left quite an impression on me. When I started Sense and Sensibility, I remembered how I’d quite liked Pride and Prejudice and hoped that I’d have a similar experience this time
Unfortunately, I was never really drawn into Sense and Sensibility. Even though I only finished reading it a couple of weeks ago, I have had to double check the characters names on Wikipedia because they’ve all left such a weak impression on me.
The story follows two sisters (Elinor and Marianne Dashwood) who both experience a heartbreak and who both respond in very different ways – sense and sensibility. Looking back, I feel like a large portion of the book was Elinor trying to make Marianne feel better about her heartbreak. I never particularly felt like the stakes were very high or that there was much tension and so I was rarely enthusiastic to read the next chapter.
In its favour, I have to admit that it did start to become more interesting towards the end. There were ulterior motives for certain characters behaviours which I certainly didn’t expect, but which made for a nice pay off after sticking through it all the way to the end.
Having said that, I did spend most of my time reading this bored and unengaged. If you want an introduction to Jane Austen or nineteenth century literature, I don’t recommend this book. I don’t like to tell people not to read any book, but if that’s what you take from this – who am I to object? (Thanks to my housemate for helping me finish that sentence.)
Rating: 4.5/10 (Sorry, Jane.)
