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Title: Austen's first effort, and it shows
Review: First let me say, I like Jane Austen. I'm not kissing up to my wife, and I don't feel less masculine in admitting it. I like good writing, and Austen is clearly a good storyteller.That said, I'm not always really into the subject matter of her stories - romance, coming of age, etc. But she writes well enough that I generally want to keep reading. Additionally, I've always enjoyed the many film adaptations of her books.But I wasn't crazy about Northanger Abbey. It was her first novel, and you can tell. The story is painfully slow, the characters (except for the heroine) are underdeveloped, and in general the love story feels very Jr. High (except with wealth and British accents).If you're reading the whole Austen corpus, then by all means read this. But if you are picking and choosing, I'd put Northanger Abbey at the bottom of the list.
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