Emma

Everything that Miss Bates said should have been cut down by 3/4. I understand that her character is irritatingly longwinded, and to show is better writing than to tell, but come on! By the end I was only reading a sentence or two of Miss Bates's page-long-or-more monologues, and then moving on; her words contained no useful content, and were merely there to demonstrate the high level of kindness and tolerance of Jane Fairfax et al.

For that matter, most of Emma's internal monologues could have been trimmed quite a bit too and not suffered for it.

I found the sudden rift between Emma and Harriet, after Harriet tells Emma that she has a thing for Mr. Knightley, a little odd. Okay, Emma is appalled at the idea of those two getting married because Harriet is in a lower caste, and because Emma is discovering she herself loves Knightley. But they were very good friends, spending every day together, and now after that single talk they are both done with each other? And Emma actually putting it in writing that they shouldn't hang out anymore?That type of behavior might fit with girls of 13 or 14, but not grown women. I thought it was a little slapdash.

I liked “Pride and Prejudice” quite a bit, and had expected to like “Emma” just as much, but the former had much tighter (better) writing. The flowery language of the time was really let loose in “Emma” and I think it suffers because of it. This is more a 2.5 star book, but skipping/skimming over vast chunks of monologues improves the flow of the story and nudges this up to 3 stars.