Evelina - Frances Burney

READ: MARCH 10 - 25, 2012
RATING: 9 OUT OF 10
REASON: REQUIRED READING FOR ENGLISH LIT. CLASS


'Lord Orville did me the honour to hand me to the coach, talking all the way of the honour I had done him! O these fashionable people!' 


Frances Burney's first and most enduringly popular novel is a vivid, satirical, and seductive account of the pleasures and dangers of fashionable life in late eighteenth-century London. As she describes her heroine's entry into society, womanhood and, inevitably, love, Burney exposes the vulnerability of female innocence in an image-conscious and often cruel world where social snobbery and sexual aggression are played out in the public arenas of pleasure-gardens, theatre visits, and balls. But Evelina's innocence also makes her a shrewd commentator on the excesses and absurdities of manners and social ambitions - as well as attracting the attention of the eminently eligible Lord Orville. Evelina, comic and shrewd, is at once a guide to fashionable London, a satirical attack on the new consumerism, an investigation of women's position in the late eighteenth century, and a love story. 


Although this took me a while to read due to other reading commitments, I enjoyed this book vastly. I may be in the minority, but I definitely prefer Burney's humour and romance to Austen's! Although the epistolary style can sometimes interrupt the flow of the story, there were times when I didn't want to put this book down because I needed to find out what would happen to Evelina next. My English tutor claims that there aren't any authors prior to Austen who can create realistic characters with psychological emotions, but I honestly found Evelina to be far more of a believable and flawed heroine than Elizabeth Bennett, who I truthfully believe to be the first unflawed Mary Sue! I laughed at Evelina's etiquette errors, particularly when it came to ballroom rules, and wanted to shake Clement Willoughby by the neck whenever he preyed on Evelina and interfered with her growing relationship with Orville. I got annoyed with Orville's jealousy over Macartney, and wished that Evelina had the ability to tell Orville the truth about her situation. I found Evelina to be far, far more of an engaging and relatable character than any of Austen's heroines, and I felt sufficiently satisfied with her happy ending, no matter how long it took to reach it, and how many times it seemed so far out of her grasp. 

My only real complaints with this book would have to be that sometimes the humorous scenes between secondary characters began to drag, especially those near the end of the novel between Mrs Selwyn and the gentlemen who were visiting Mrs Beaumont. These scenes often started out being quite amusing, but they went on for pages and pages with no purpose other than to provide entertainment, and didn't succeed in moving the plot along. Captain Mirvan's scenes were similar, and while the one with the monkey was funny to begin with, the way it developed (and I don't think the issues between Lovel and Mirvan were ever really concluded?) just made it even more bizarre. Especially since this scene occurred so close to the conclusion of the story. Perhaps I was missing out on some of the humour of the period (although the notes at the end of the Oxford edition of the book are extremely useful, and I'd recommended readers to make use of these as much as possible) but I found some of the humour a bit tiring. 

Despite my displeasure with some of the humour in this novel, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it has to be my favourite text so far in my class on the Development of the Novel. Although I'm up to my ears in necessary reading for university, for reviews and from recommendations from friends, I would love to read more of Burney's work in the future. Since this is her first novel, I would love to see how her writing develops. While I was initially cautious at reading a novel from 1778, since I had grown quite tiresome of Samuel Richardson's Pamela, which is not much earlier than this novel, I found Burney's writing incredibly compelling, her characters most engaging and capable of developing their own voices and personalities, and her plot seemed far more structured than that of other novels from the period. If you're at all intrigued by this novel, do take the time to read it, for I think you will find it worth the time it takes to read. I think this would be of particular interest to fans of Austen, and I would be intrigued to hear what die-hard Austen fans think of this book. Personally, I've never been a great lover of Austen, although I do enjoy her novels, and I find it interesting that Burney is so much lesser known although she writes of similar subjects, in what I think is a much more engaging manner.  

A Sentimental Journey - Laurence Sterne

READ: MARCH 05 - 06, 2012
RATING: 4 OUT OF 10
REASON: REQUIRED READING FOR ENGLISH LIT. CLASS

A Sentimental Journey is a novel without a plot, a journey without a destination. It records the adventures of the amiable Parson Yorick, as he sets off on his travels through France and Italy, relishing his encounters with all manner of men and women-particularly the pretty ones. Sterne's tale rapidly moves away from the narrative of travel to become a series of dramatic sketches, ironic incidents, philosophical musings, reminiscences, and anecdotes; sharp wit is mixed with gaiety, irony with tender feeling. With A Sentimental Journey, as well as his masterpiece, Tristram Shandy, Sterne forged a truly original style and established himself as the first of the stream-of-consciousness writers. 

This is probably my first dud of 2012. This short, unfinished novel had a few scenes in it that grabbed my attention but was otherwise rather uninspiring. Sometimes I just had absolutely no idea what was going on in this book, whereas at other points the story had some real potential and looked like it was going somewhere - and then it would jump to something else entirely and that thread of the story would be lost. 

According to my lecturer, this book had a lot of literary illusions to other travelogues, novels and classical literature. I'm probably missing a lot of these references, but it seems that perhaps without this prior knowledge there isn't a lot to appreciate about the actual story? Yorick gets into some mildly amusing situations and there are some moments of irony that can't be missed by any readers, but otherwise this is just the unfinished tale of a man's travels across France and into Italy. It was mostly readable (although there were some times that I had to go back and reread chapters as the sequence of events was difficult to understand) a but I didn't find the story or the protagonist terribly compelling. I think that's the problem - there is no real plot and the author is trying to do something in terms of literary criticism, rather than focusing on telling a story. Perhaps I'll appreciate this book more after my tutorial, but I just don't think this is for me.

Pamela - Samuel Richardson

READ: FEB 06 - 20, 2012
RATING: 6 OUT OF 10
REASON: REQUIRED READING FOR ENGLISH LIT. CLASS

One of the most spectacular successes of the flourishing literary marketplace of eighteenth-century London, Pamela also marked a defining moment in the emergence of the modern novel. In the words of one contemporary, it divided the world "into two different Parties, Pamelists and Anti-pamelists," even eclipsing the sensational factional politics of the day. Preached for its morality, and denounced as pornography in disguise, it vividly describes a young servant's long resistance to the attempts of her predatory master to seduce her. Written in the voice of its low-born heroine, Pamela is not only a work of pioneering psychological complexity, but also a compelling and provocative study of power and its abuse.

When I finally finished this book I truly felt like I'd achieved something. It's certainly not Richardson's longest work, but in places this book just dragged on and on. I found it particularly tedious towards the end when Pamela had resolved all of her issues with Mr B., his family members and the servants and there honestly wasn't anything else to happen in the book, other that have every secondary character compliment Pamela on how wonderful she was. The first Mary Sue? Perhaps. 

Predictably, I was disturbed that Pamela agreed to marry Mr B. But after my lecture on this book I began to reconsider the way in which I'd read into both the main characters and wonder whether a) Mr B.'s "rape" attempts had really been serious (particularly considering his reaction to Pamela's fit in the scene where he dresses up as a maid) and b) Pamela is truly a reliable narrator, or if she read into things wrongly or exaggerated. Plus, she must have actually had some feelings for Mr B. before she received his letter, otherwise she wouldn't have returned to him. I don't think she's a stupid girl in any way, but perhaps just a bit young and naive, causing her to present events in the letters to her parents in a skewed view at times. So while their marriage initially shocked me, it also made me think quite seriously about the way this book is read by a twenty-first century audience, and the ways in which our perceptions of this book warp our perspective of it. I knew what was going to happen to Pamela - but the eighteenth century audience didn't. 

This book had a lot of food for thought about class relations and romantic relationships in the eighteenth century, as well as the changing face of fiction. But it was also quite tedious in places, and repetitive. My entire seminar class bemoaned the number of times that Mr B. hid in a cupboard in order to spy on Pamela. This book is long, over 500 pages, and the repetitive nature of the scenes and conversations can simply make the story drag on. Trust me, if you need to read this for a class - give yourself two weeks to read it in. I gave myself a week and didn't manage it, partly because I was ill for two days and couldn't focus to read anything more intellectually stimulating than a Sweet Valley High novel, but even if I hadn't been ill it would have taken me more than a week. At the start of the book you'll be like, "I can read 100 pages a day, this is pretty compelling and entertaining." Then you get to Volume II and realise that 200 pages of the novel focus on Pamela and Mr B. AFTER they get married, in which there is exactly ONE conflict. And seriously, that conflict actually dragged on longer than necessary. A classmate told me to look forward to the conflict in Volume II since the start of the volume is pretty uninteresting, but by the time the conflict had been going on for quite some time I was honestly getting bored with it. 

I did quite enjoy this book when I started it, but given the points I've mentioned above (Pamela's perfectness, the tedious nature of many of the scenes, the length of the novel itself) it isn't one that I'd particularly recommend, unless you're interested in eighteenth century fiction or the development of the novel. It provides a lot of good discussion points, but isn't the book for you if you're looking for an entertaining classic akin to Jane Austen or the Bronte sisters. I'm sure I'll be musing over this book for weeks to come, but I did have to force myself to finish it, so I'm rating it 6/10.

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

READ: JAN 15 - FEB 08, 2012
RATING: 7 OUT OF 10
REASON: REQUIRED READING FOR ENGLISH LIT. CLASS
FORMAT: AUDIOBOOK FROM LIBRIVOX.ORG

Marianne Dashwood wears her heart on her sleeve, and when she falls in love with the dashing but unsuitable John Willoughby she ignores her sister Elinor's warning that her impulsive behaviour leaves her open to gossip and innuendo. Meanwhile Elinor, always sensitive to social convention, is struggling to conceal her own romantic disappointment, even from those closest to her. Through their parallel experience of love—and its threatened loss—the sisters learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they are to find personal happiness in a society where status and money govern the rules of love. 

I was really enjoying this to begin with but I got a bit bored halfway through and while it did pick up again, the ending was so sudden and everyone was happily married off in a way that didn't seem in keeping with the tone of the story. I was really hoping that Elinor would get together with someone else, who had been constant throughout the story and seemed like a good match, so I was surprised and a bit disappointed with how the book ended. This is Austen's first published work, but I'd have to say that I probably even prefer Northanger Abbey to this, and that's the first novel she ever optioned to a publisher and was not in a finished state when it was eventually published in 1817. I'm still not sure how I feel about this story. I loved the social satire, which was even more prevalent in S&S than it had been in P&P. But Elinor was the typical cardboard-cut-out Austen heroine who had no flaws and reformed everyone around her. Marianne was much more interesting, mainly because she was so inherently flawed, but even she was reformed in the end, along with Willoughby. If everything hadn't been so perfect and if there had been different pairings I would have enjoyed this book more, but as it is, I'm giving it 7/10.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

READ: SEPTEMBER 04 - NOVEMBER 25, 2011
RATING: 8 OUT OF 10


If you're looking for a free and well-read audiobook of this novel I'd definitely recommend this one from LibriVox. The reader, Karen Savage, does an excellent English accent, doesn't read too fast or two slow and manages to give each of the characters a slightly different voice so as to avoid confusion when listening. 

My aim for 2011 was to read Pride and Prejudice, as I felt like I'd failed as a woman and an English Literature student since I hadn't read Jane Austen's most famous novel by now. While I read Northanger Abbey in my first year of university, it isn't exactly representative of her typical work. But it came to September and I hadn't yet read P&P as I'd planned, so I started reading on my Kindle. Sadly, this didn't get very far as I had a lot of work to do for university in September and I completely forgot that I'd been reading P&P. Eventually, in November, I checked out LibriVox.org and found an audiobook that sounded nice and downloaded it to my Blackberry, determined to listen to the entirety of the book before the end of 2011. 

I'd enjoyed Northanger Abbey back when I read it in February 2010, but that was it; I didn't love it. Since I'm a fan of romance novels I feel like I should adore Austen, but I don't. But there's nothing wrong with simply enjoying listening to a nice, easy story while you do the ironing or wash dishes, is there? I know that most of my romance-reading or even just classic-reading friends on GoodReads have loved this book and given it five-stars, but I'm afraid P&P is getting a solid but slightly lower 8 out of 10 from me. 

One of the things I enjoyed about NA was the witty dialogue and banter between the characters, and I was not disappointed in this when I started P&P, particularly with the hilarity of all the things that Mrs Bennett and Caroline Bingley came out with. That said, nothing really seemed to happen in the first twenty chapters of the novel and I found myself thinking that if I'd been reading the book and not listening to it then I might have put the book down and moved on to something else. As it was, I kept listening and around a third of the way into the book it began to pick up, particularly as Elizabeth and Mr Darcy actually interacted with each other during this part of the story! For a book that is generally regarded as a "classic romance" there was surprisingly little interaction between the hero and heroine, and while Darcy later proved himself to be a rather admirable gentleman, Elizabeth was rather passive, except on the few occasions when she became quite judgemental. I found that the book got far more interesting when Lydia ran off. As immature and flighty as Lydia is, she seemed to have a bit more personality than Elizabeth, dare I say it? I just wish I'd got inside Elizabeth's head more, as there were a few times when she really showed her personality around the middle of the story and then again at the conclusion of the novel, but to begin with she was too passive for my liking. 

All in all, I was satisfied with the ending of the novel and enjoyed the direction that it took after Lydia's escapades. There isn't a distinct plot structure in this book, so perhaps this explains my difficulty with it and why I was slightly uninterested to begin with. This has in no way become one of my favourite classics but it did provide entertainment and after the initial slow start I truly came to enjoy it. I have to read Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion next semester for English so I'm looking forward to seeing how those compare. I've not become a die-hard Janeite, nor am I pining for my own Darcy (my Simon will do just fine, thank you very much) but I'll admit that Jane Austen does write an engaging story and provides entertaining insight into the lives of the early nineteenth century nobility and privileged classes.


Pride and Prejudice was my Challenge Book for 2011. Did you challenge yourself to read a certain novel in 2011? Did you succeed? I still need to decide what to challenge myself to read in 2012...

Kilmeny of the Orchard - L. M. Montgomery

When twenty-four-year-old Eric Marshall arrives on Prince Edward Island to become a substitute schoolmaster, he has a bright future in his wealthy family's business. Eric has taken the two-month teaching post only as a favor to a friend -- but fate throws in his path a beautiful, mysterious girl named Kilmeny Gordon. With jet black hair and sea blue eyes, Kilmeny immediately captures Eric's heart. But Kilmeny cannot speak, and Eric is concerned for and bewitched by this shy, sensitive mute girl. For the first time in his life Eric must work hard for something he wants badly. And there is nothing he wants more than for Kilmeny to retum his love.

This was such a sweet, quaint little novella. Definitely not Montgomery's best work, but it put a smile on my face and was a quick read. A typical romance, in which the career-driven hero who isn't searching for love falls for the mute girl purely because of her beauty and innocence. Yes, it's shallow, but remember that this was published in 1910! Sadly, because of the predictability of the story and the obvious racism expressed towards the adopted Italian son, I don't think that this story will fare very well in the 21st century. While it was a nice escape from the real world, the only truly outstanding parts of this novella were the descriptions of the scenery. Even when using a tired and overused plot, Montgomery is able to make it her own with her signature descriptions of Prince Edward Island. I'd recommend this book to serious fans of Montgomery, but warn that it isn't a patch on the Anne books, or even her short-stories. Don't come to this book expecting too much and you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised, and you'll hopefully close the book with fond feelings towards old-fashioned romances and even more of a desire to visit PEI! 7/10

This book can be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg and various other sources to be read on Kindles and other digital reading devices. Personally, I recommend ManyBooks.net because it's user-friendly and easy to navigate.

The Collector - John Fowles

Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time. Alone and desperate, Miranda must struggle to overcome her own prejudices and contempt if she is understand her captor, and so gain her freedom.

This isn't a book that I would say that I "liked" as, after all, it is about a man who kidnaps a woman and holds her prisoner in his basement. But it was incredibly compelling and I really felt that the author got inside Frederick's head. I found this book incredibly interesting to read in light of all the kidnapping/abduction stories that have been cropping up over the past few years. Despite being published in the 1960s, I doubt the mind of a kidnapper has changed very much since then. Fowles is either a very creative or very disturbed man to have been able to write from Frederick's perspective as I wouldn't have doubted for a moment that the protagonist was capable of such acts. As for Miranda, I was surprised by how unsympathetic I felt towards her initially. She was incredibly pretentious and, despite what she expressed in her diary, rather stuck-up. She was so focused on not being middle-class and suburban that her actions caused her to cement herself into this class of people! I wasn't too interested in her back-story to begin with but it grew on me, and by the end of her section I was hoping that events wouldn't take such a tragic turn... But the ending is inevitable, I suppose. I didn't expect it, but thinking about it, there really was no other option. And there was a nice twist at the end - or was that obvious too? Overall, a fascinating study of human nature. My only complaints would be that Miranda was hard to relate to and therefore I found it difficult to care about her plight, and that I actually had nightmares the night after I started reading this! So perhaps not for people who are overly sensitive. 8/10

Kate's Choice - Louisa May Alcott

In this heartwarming story, Kate is faced with a difficult choice. Her father's dying wish was for her to live with each of his estranged brothers - ultimately choosing one family with which to make her home. Although their motivation varies, all are anxious to have her - one because of her money, another because her great-grandfather had been a lord, a third in hopes of securing her hand for the son of a close friend, and a fourth because of love for her alone.

Which will she choose? Join us for the memorable story of how Kate makes the best choice of all.

Although the title of this book is Kate's Choice there are actually two other stories, What Love Can Do and Gwen's Adventure in the Snow. I have to admit that the last story is actually my favourite, not the main one. Written for newspapers or magazines when Alcott was first embarking on her writing career, these remained undiscovered until recently. Each of the stories centres around Christmas in some way. In the title-story, Kate is left orphaned just before Christmas and moves from England to America to be with her father's relatives. It was his wish that she visit each of his brothers in turn and choose who she wanted to live with. But Kate discovers her father's mother, alone in her big family home, and sets about bringing all of the relatives together at Christmas in order to cheer up her grandmother. In What Love Can Do the neighbours of a poverty-stricken family overhear the children talking about how they can't afford any Christmas gifts and decided to surprise them. And in my personal favourite, Gwen's Adventure in the Snow, Gwen and her cousins go for a sleigh ride and are struck by a blizzard. Sheltering in the family summer house, they have to make do with the few supplies they can scrounge and camp out until the storm is over. I think this one is my favourite because, as a child, I always adored stories about children "playing house" with the odds and ends that they discover in a shed, cellar, tree-house, abandoned house, etc. 

This book would be perfect for any Alcott fan, young or old. The editor has included lots of background information about Alcott, her writing and what can be learned from these stories, which would be interesting to a collector. And the shortness of the stories and the large print make the book perfect for a child who has enjoyed having Little Women read to them but isn't ready for full-length chapter books yet. While those unfamiliar with Alcott's work may find the stories rather predictable, long-standing fans will adore this and recognise her typical characters and values immediately. The presentation of this book is also beautiful, a little hardback with a lovely cover and illustrations and decorative fonts throughout. The perfect stocking filler for a girl who loves old-fashioned stories. 8/10

The Holding - Vicente Blasco Ibanez

This passionate and moving story of social injustice, violence and revenge, set in the Valencian huerta, has become the classic text of Spanish regional realism. Blasco Ibanez, the 'Spanish Zola', dramatically confronts one of the great social issues of the late nineteenth century, the possession of land, in a vivid recreation of the local types and traditional customs of a closed rural community which jealousy guards its rights and administers its own rough justice against the outsider. This novel is both a lyrical hymn to nature and an expose of man's inhumanity to man, narrated with a human compassion worthy of his master, Galdos.

Batiste and his family, poverty stricken and homeless, move into farm land that has been abandoned for ten years. Thinking themselves to be fortunate to get such a good offer from the landlord, they ignore the supposed "curse" on the land that is left from the previous tenant. But the locals haven't forgotten Barret, the old owner, and will do anything to protect his land from being possessed by a new tenant. Thus Batiste and his family are plagued by hostility, rumours and insults from the second they move in. The family are struck by continual misfortune, ultimately causing them to regret ever having dreamt that they could escape their previous poverty in this supposedly plentiful red soil. 

In a strange way, I did enjoy reading this book. It is wonderfully written and the land truly comes alive through the descriptions, but this doesn't detract from how depressing the story is. I won't spoil the ending, but I will say that it isn't positive and uplifting in any way. While Ibanez made clear the plight of the tenant farmers in late 19th century Spain, I just couldn't get my head around how hostile the locals were to innocent Batiste and his family. It seemed absurd that they would hate them simply because they had taken up residence in the land that used to belong to their friend, when it was clear that they weren't intending to disrespect Barret, just wanting to make enough money to feed and clothe their family. I'm sure that there were many struggles like this at the time, but I couldn't help but be perplexed by the behaviour of the characters. 

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the area, time period or just Spanish literature in general. This book is hard to get hold of, unless you're willing to fork out £15+, but it is worth the read. Just be aware that there are few positive moments in this novella! 7/10

Effi Briest - Theodor Fontane

Unworldly young Effi Briest is married off to Baron von Innstetten, an austere and ambitious civil servant twice her age, who has little time for his new wife. Isolated and bored, Effi finds comfort and distraction in a brief liaison with Major Crampas, a married man with a dangerous reputation. But years later, when Effi has almost forgotten her affair, the secret returns to haunt her, with fatal consequences. Considered to be Fontane’s greatest novel, Effi Briest is a humane, unsentimental portrait of a young woman torn between her duties as a wife and mother and the instincts of her heart.

I'm afraid that reading this immediately after Madame Bovary may have influenced my opinion on this book. It was impossible not to compare the two, and I definitely prefer Emma to Effi. While I felt sorry for Effi, pushed into marriage to a much older man when she was barely a child, I couldn't help but find her selfish and immature. Even her husband refers to her as a "spoilt young woman"! I'm sure that Effi had motivations for her actions but I never really felt like I understood them; Fontane didn't really get inside her head the way that Flaubert did with Emma. Although this novel offered a fascinating insight into late 19th century German aristocratic society I found it difficult to connect with the characters in comparison to other novels I've read from the period. I sympathised with their plight at being victims of the society in which they lived, but I never got to know them well enough to really care about them. There were, however, some wonderful descriptions of the scenery. I have the feeling that Fontane is better at describing locations than he is the emotions of his characters. 7/10

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment and the consequences are devastating. Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for his heroine; but Flaubert insisted: 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi'.

As much as I loved Flaubert's style of writing I found myself disliking Emma more and more as the novel progressed. Initially I was sympathetic towards Emma's situation; believing that marriage would solve all of her problems but discovering that life is not like a romance novel. And I could understand when she started trying to fill up the void in her life with material objects and affairs. But then she become demanding with her lovers, forcing them to fulfill the romantic fantasies she had from novels, and she couldn't cope when everything didn't work out entirely as she'd planned it. She just couldn't let go of her dreams and realise that life isn't perfect and that you have to make things work, rather than expecting men to rush into your life and fix everything. This is an excellent book to analyse and study because of this concept (and many others that feature in this novel), but I got rather frustrated with Emma towards the end of the novel. It was also horrifically depressing in places, so don't read this if you're having a sad day. I definitely recommend this book because of the incredible amount of issues it covers, as well as the wonderfully descriptive yet very readable narrative style. But I'm afraid that sometimes I just wanted to take Emma by the shoulders and shake her! 8/10

Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin

Eugene Onegin is the master work of the poet whom Russians regard as the fountainhead of their literature. Set in 1820s imperial Russia, Pushkin's novel in verse follows the emotions and destiny of three men - Onegin the bored fop, Lensky the minor elegiast, and a stylized Pushkin himself - and the fates and affections of three women - Tatiana the provincial beauty, her sister Olga, and Pushkin's mercurial Muse. Engaging, full of suspense, and varied in tone, it also portrays a large cast of other characters and offers the reader many literary, philosophical, and autobiographical digressions, often in a highly satirical vein. Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's own favourite work, and it shows him attempting to transform himself from a romantic poet into a realistic novelist. Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's own favourite work, and this new translation by Stanley Mitchell conveys the literal sense and the poetic music of the original.

Not being a massive fan of poetry, I wasn't sure what to expect when starting this "Novel in Verse". But how is it possible not to love Pushkin? The writing was simply beautiful and I think the translator, Stanley Mitchell, deserves a lot of praise for containing the beauty of Pushkin's writing in his translation. It was also incredibly readable, unlike some other novels from this period which can trip you up with the language and descriptions. To anyone looking to read Pushkin for the first time I'd definitely recommend the 2008 Penguin Classics edition as the translation is beautiful and easy to read, peppered with many helpful footnotes. I'm glad that my European Literature module gave me the chance to read this and have to say that I'm slowly warming up to poetry! 8/10

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Orphaned Jane Eyre grows up in the home of her heartless aunt, where she endures loneliness and cruelty, and at a charity school with a harsh regime. This troubled childhood strengthens Jane’s natural independence and spirit - which prove necessary when she finds a position as governess at Thornfield Hall. But when she finds love with her sardonic employer, Rochester, the discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a choice. Should she stay with him and live with the consequences, or follow her convictions, even if it means leaving the man she loves? A novel of intense power and intrigue, Jane Eyre (1847) dazzled and shocked readers with its passionate depiction of a woman’s search for equality and freedom.

As they say, third time lucky! I tried reading this book when I was 11 because my grandma gave me a copy and Mia Thermopolis read it in Mia Goes Fourth but I gave up on it. I tried again when I was fourteen but obviously wasn't the hopeless romantic that I am today. But, thankfully, I decided to give it another go this year and ended up adoring it! This has to be one of the most romantic stories ever written and I loved that Jane and Mr Rochester were unconventional heroes and heroines. My only complaint is that I got a bit bored during the section where Jane goes to live with her new-found cousins as she rarely mentioned Mr Rochester and I found it hard to be convinced that she missed him so much that she'd go back to him. Other than that - this book was perfect! And there was a wonderful quote in the concluding chapter that reminded me of how I feel about my boyfriend. 9/10

"I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blessed - blessed beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am; ever more absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our seperate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character - perfect concord is the result."