Helen

This is my first post-degree summer, so I've been looking for new and different authors who I think might interest me. In this spirit, I picked a Maria Edgeworth (well, partly that and partly because it was on one of those Waterstone's stands...), thinking to myself "If Jane Austen liked it, it can't be bad".

And it isn't. Or at least, not really. It's well-written and reasonably compelling, leaving me with a strong desire to keep reading every time I put it down. I'm just not sure that that's enough. I found that Edgeworth's strong influence on Austen's writing style was evident, making the experience of reading the novel slightly eerie.

Essentially, my problem with 'Helen' was that it had all of the outdated attitudes and excessive morality of Austen's novels, but none of the humour. Helen herself is just a bit wet - she actually reminded me very strongly of Fanny from 'Mansfield Park' - and not particularly interesting.

Cecilia is a prize (excuse the language) bitch. She willingly betrays her best friend to save herself and doesn't think twice about it until it affects her directly. Lady Davenport, the only truly interesting woman in the novel (Miss Clarendon is offensively rude) proves to be rather pathetic, spoiling the end of the novel for me.

The moral of the story seemed to be "Don't lie, it's bad", which I felt could easily have been expressed in a paragraph, and, to be honest, I'm not sure there was anything else going on. Interesting reading certainly, but it did leave me feeling that Austen's taste didn't match her abilities.