Sense and Sensibility

I finished reading Sense and Sensibility, a wonderful Jane Austen novel...what a terrific book! It is truly wonderful, as good as Pride and Prejudice for me. It is well written, funny, surprising, sad, scandalous, romantic, dramatic...it runs the gamut. I've watched the movie version starring Emma Thompson, which was well done, but the novel is so much better!

I certainly won't give away the ending, but a brief synopsis: Mrs. Dashwood, as the second wife of a man with a son from his first marriage, loses almost everything when she becomes a widow. She and her three lovely daughters take a cottage on the estate of distant, but generous, relatives that want to help them. The two eldest Miss Dashwoods are of marrying age and the novel follows their tales of love and loss, as well as questioning their ideas about life (such as "Can a person fall in love more than once in their life?").

As usual, Austen points out the ironies of family loyalty, the importance of manners and decorum, honesty and integrity, and adds great romance to the mix. This may actually be my favorite novel of hers...the characters are so well developed, so many are so amusing and enjoyable in their whims, fancies, meanness, pretensions, silliness, and passions that you wish the novel would not end. She did not rewrite this novel as many times as she did Pride and Prejudice (which is why PP is her favorite of her novels, and many find it to be the best written) but it is still absolutely wonderful. I very much recommend it!