Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

Impelled by the recent masterpiece theater showings of everything Jane Austen, I decided that I should finally give in and read Northanger Abbey. I hate to say bad things about Ms. Austen. I really am one of her greatest fans. So I'll get my negative criticism over with right away, and then offer up my praises to her for everything else. There are far too many run-on sentences in this story. You would almost mistake her for Faulkner. Then again, it is her first novel, and she wrote it when she was only 23. So I can forgive her for almost any mistakes I notice in this story. Especially when you consider that she had to write the whole darn thing out, instead of using a handy computer--like people in our day.

There, now that that is over with: the story line is charming, Ms. Moreland's innocence is refreshing, and I think that I like Mr. Henry Tilney the most out of all Austen's male characters. A girl likes to be teased a little bit every once in a while, and Tilney seems to know the perfect balance between teasing and being serious and sincere.