Hello everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. In this post, I will be doing a wrap up of all the books I read in April. This month was a rather slow month for me, to be honest and I didn’t get to read as many books as I would’ve liked to or finish all the books I wanted to read this month. In fact, I only completed two books in April. But this doesn’t mean that I didn’t read any more. I had two DNFs this month and I didn’t get to finish the last one (though I did try). Here is my review for each one of these:
1. CLASSIC: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
This is THE most famous (and popular) classical romance novel in existence and it needs no introduction. I picked it up again (it’d probably been 20 years since I read it last) because many people compared it to North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, which I read at the beginning of the year (or rather many people compared Gaskell’s novel to Pride and Prejudice and said that North and South was Pride and Prejudice in an industrial setting), and I wanted to see if this was true.
But it’s not. Mr. Thornton is not Mr. Darcy, Margaret is not Elizabeth, and vice versa. True, there are similarities between the two female protagonists; for example, both of them are the adults when it comes to their parents, and both of them tend to perceive incorrectly Mr. Thornton and Mr. Darcy’s characters based on preconceived notions that don’t do them justice, but I also think that Margaret and Elizabeth are nothing alike. The same goes for Mr. Thornton and Mr. Darcy, though they too have similarities. Both, for example, are undeniably proud men. But these two books differ the most in the love story itself. In North and South, the narrator never takes us into Mr. Thornton’s head and we are never privy to how he knows himself in love; to how Margaret affects him and how he can do nothing but admit later that he is in love. We all know that Margaret is going to end up with Mr. Thornton but when Margaret is hurt halfway through the book, for example, Mr. Thornton is already madly in love with her and decides to propose to her thereafter. Yes, this book has the same plot points as P&P (quite literally the same) but this does not occur with Mr. Darcy, and we are told how Elizabeth starts to affect him from the first scene in which he meets her. And later, he proposes to her knowing that it is against his better judgement. In this respect, I think that Mr. Darcy has more agency than Mr. Thornton and I was able to believe the love story between him and Elizabeth more readily.
Also, I think that both these novels (romance aside) have a different purpose. North and South highlights the differences of England’s social classes within the Victorian era and focuses on industrialism, city life, and conflicts between both social classes and gender. Pride and Prejudice, on the other hand, satirizes marriage and the place of women in Jane Austen’s own society. The more important lesson that Jane Austen seeks to convey is, “Don’t let first impressions dictate how you approach a person because there is always more than meets the eye.” The second is that it’s okay not to be good at everything. English society expected a lot of women in order for them to be considered eligible for marriage, and Jane Austen lets us know that it is not always best to be “accomplished” at everything.
This book is definitely more than meets the eye too. It is not just about Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth’s romance and eventual marriage but it is also a book full of jokes that laughs at the reality Jane Austen lived in, and the author is an expert at using humor to criticize characters such as Mr. Collins and Mrs. Bennet. In a way, this book reminds me a little bit about Don Quixote, which is a parody of chivalric romances, heroic idealism, and a critique of Spanish imperialism. Jane Austen, as I said before, on the other hand, satirizes marriage and the place of women of English society in the early 1800s.
2. ROMANCE: Book Lovers by Emily Henry (DNF)
I did not, however, like Book Lovers by Emily Henry. I picked this book up because it was one of the most popular books of 2022 and the winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Romance last year. But I have come to realize that Emily Henry is not an author for me. Last year too I tried reading People We Meet On Vacation and I DNF’d that book as well, so I think there’s a trend going on now. I will say though that Book Lovers started out strong, but then it lost its momentum and Nora and Libby’s vacation at Sunshine Falls, North Carolina was boring. And the whole list thing was rather silly for my taste. I was also rather indifferent whether Nora and Charlie got together or not. I know they do, but I just didn’t really care how they got together. So I DNF’d it. Sorry. I will not read any more books by this author.
3. REVIEW FOR SELF-PUBLISHED/INDIE AUTHORS: The Bridge of Little Jeremy by Indrajit Garai (DNF)
I received an ARC from a friend of the author in exchange for an honest review. But unfortunately this book too was a DNF for me. I was hoping I would like it because it is set in Paris (and I visited Paris almost 10 years ago), but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. Despite the fact that the author does a superb job of describing the city, which is a character in this book as well, there is not much else to make this book worth the read. My biggest complaint about it though is the protagonist himself.
The Bridge of Little Jeremy is the story of a young boy trying to help his mother out of financial ruin. But there were several things that I couldn’t believe in this one. Unless Jeremy is some kind of virtuoso, which we are not told, I couldn’t believe, for example, that he was this accomplished painter at such a young age right out of the bat because we don’t see his journey of becoming said accomplished painter, and what is worse, he stays that way. There is no depth to him or development. Jeremy is perfect from start to finish. In addition, Jeremy doesn’t seem to be a kid at all. When we meet him at the beginning of the story, he is already selling his paintings and helping his mother pay the bills. Maybe he’s had to do some more growing up than other kids his age? Okay, it does happen, and a kid with a heart condition might have to. But his vocabulary is definitely not that of a 12 year old, and he says things that no 12 year old boy that I know has ever said. Also, I didn’t buy that Jeremy knew the history of Paris to the minutest detail, from the Middle Ages to the French Revolution. If he’s a history aficionado, that’s great, but please help us believe that he is so; as is, Jeremy is just too perfect and alien. Another thing that I didn’t believe was that he knew what an insurance co-payment was and how much they pay for it. I understand that some kids need to grow up quicker than others, but I didn’t know what this was when I was 12, so I couldn’t believe that Jeremy did and I couldn’t read any more. Sorry.
4. LIBRARY BOOK: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
This is Jane Austen’s most controversial book and I can see why. Fanny Price is the complete opposite of Elizabeth Bennet. She is the epitome of correctness, decorum, and propriety, to the point where it seems too much. She is also meek, quiet, and obedient; as well as perfectly content to stay in the background where nobody will notice her. And because of this, many people don’t like her. But her character contrasts to those of her cousins, more specifically, Maria Bertram, and to Mary Crawford. Basically, all three of these women interact with their culture in terms of marriage, morality, and social status differently and their actions, Jane Austen says, will shape their destinies.
This book is a critique of England’s obsession with manners, and the novel’s theme seems to be that good manners don’t necessarily correspond to good morals, and neither does their absence. The estate itself, for example, represents stability, tradition, and safety. Fanny loves this old order and misses it terribly when she visits her family in Portsmouth. Henry and Mary Crawford, on the other hand, represent the bustle, false friendships, and vices of London. Henry Crawford, for example, has both bad manners and zero morals; he is a shameless flirt, and doesn’t think twice about making Maria Bertram fall in love with him despite the fact that she is already promised and engaged to another. Later on, when Maria is already married and he sees her again, he cannot abide her indifference to him where once she was all smiles and flirtation despite fancying himself in love with Fanny. So he convinces her to leave her husband and elope with him.
Personally, I found this novel to be a critique of two things: one, England’s high society, whose youngest members literally have nothing to do with themselves and they easily become victims of vice as a consequence, like Tom Bertram, who is a spendthrift. His sisters, Maria and Julia, are both spoiled, and their mother, Lady Bertram, is the epitome of laziness. She’s even lazy when she speaks. Second, it criticizes how women were sometimes forced to accept an offer of marriage even if that proposal was not in their best interest. This is shown when both Mr. Thomas and Edmund push Fanny into accepting Mr. Crawford’s proposal even though Fanny knows beforehand that she can never love him. It also doesn’t matter how many times Fanny tells them that she doesn’t like Mr. Crawford. But, of course, both of them know what is best for her. Not her. This opportunity is too good for a woman to pass, especially a poor one like her. And I did not like this about Edmund. Also his infatuation with Mary Crawford literally lasts 47 chapters, out of 48, of the book and it isn’t until he realizes that Mary Crawford doesn’t have any morals like her brother that he starts to think of Fanny as a wife instead of a cousin or sister. And this felt too rushed for my liking. Edmund Bertram is also not an exceptional male protagonist as Mr. Darcy is, and I have to admit that he didn’t impress me enough to say that I love him as much as I loved Mr. Darcy (though that’s hard to top).
That is everything for this wrap up. Thank you for reading, and I hope I encouraged you to pick any of these books up. See you next time.
