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Aug 03, 2018SuzanneUbick rated this title 0.5 out of 5 stars
I was really disappointed in this book. The whole thing is overblown. Just one of the weird situations might have - more delicately handled - been funny. Ladling melodrama atop melodrama made it nauseating as well as boring. The characters all lack charm. Vulgarity is their defining attribute. Austen’s Kitty, Lydia and Mrs. Bennett were vulgar - but there’s vulgar and there’s VULGAR. It was hard to care what might become of any one of Sittenfeld’s characters, including Jane, Mr. Bennett and especially Lizzie. Jane Austen said of her work that it was like using a very fine brush to paint details onto an ivory miniature. This author slings buckets of virulently-coloured paints at a very large, coarse-grained canvas.