I found this quite hard work, but ultimately probably enjoyed it.
Emma is a prototype unreliable narrator (although not the narrator in the modern sense), making so many mistakes and misjudgements. It is quite a tight location based novel (ie small community) but the absence of certain characters (Churchill in particular) is striking at times; he is important to the plot but the rest of the characters don’t know what he is doing (nor Jane Fairfax, who is secretly engaged to him before arriving in the plot).
If you have read it before, the ultimate marriage of Emma to Mr Knightley and Harriet to the farmer whose name I forget is rather predictable, although I had forgotten the dreadful Mrs Elton, whose presence looms large.
I enjoyed it more I think than Mansfield Park, but Austen is not a particularly easy read.
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