This Book Is So Good, Gerald Resisted Jumping To Read The Ending!

The Marriage Plot

I don't know what I expect to accomplish by telling you I loved a book that everyone, including the reviewers, seems to love, but it has been a long time since I've stood in the middle of the sidewalk reading a passage for minutes after stepping off the bus.  The wit and intelligence of the first hundred or so pages delighted me--as if I now could imagine Austen herself navigating the perplexing world of semiotics, deconstruction,
feminism, and the modern academy.  Still, I knew that "the marriage plot", so central to Austen, would have to meet the bleak prospects painted by the fictional professor who believes that the novel died with the demise of marriage as the most important life decision.  When I next continued my reading, the plot and perspective would shift in a way I didn't expect midway, but I didn't simply jump to the end as I have been accustomed
to do to see if I would "like" it--that is to say, to yield to my apprehension and intolerance of encountering too much "reality" outside of reality.   I trusted the beauty and precision of this amazing work, and hope you can read it without knowing the ending.

--Gerald