Reviews and Comments

I really like very much of this book. Similar to H.L. Mencken, I do think the first half far surpasses the second, but Chapter V goes a long way to redeeming that second half. It helps to put your mind back a century to when this was first published, and when you knew nothing of Fitzgerald, allowing yourself to view its freshness. For all its flaws it is a terrific debut novel and I would have loved being there for its initial impact.

Maybe each new young generation needs its novel, while it still thinks it is different and unique and not yet cynical and disillusioned as to what it is capable of becoming. Ultimately the strength of this novel is that questioning by Amory Blaine of what he can become. Like him or hate him, those are questions most of us wrestle within during those same years of our lives. Even wondering what are the questions themselves. "'Is he pretty important? Kinda more important than you are?' Amory laughed. 'That remains to be seen,' he answered. 'That's the question.'" Later, "'But all that has nothing to do with the question.' 'Just what is the question?' Here Amory has to pause to consider exactly what the question was." And like or hate Fitzgerald's self-congratulatory basking in his own literary education, it is at least honest and authentic in its representation of the ego of youth.

And if not the specific answer, Amory at least finally senses the right direction in which to seek an answer. "He found something that he wanted, had always wanted and always would want - not to be admired, as he had feared; not to be loved, as he had made himself believe; but to be necessary to people, to be indispensable." Of course, how to fulfill that aim remains a further question in need of an answer.

Maybe 3.5 stars. While Austen has a facility with the language, and an excellent ability to convey a convincing character, there are too many authorial issues which intrude for my tastes. I am not a fan of the author's frequent breaches of the fourth wall, though I recognize that authorial interjection was much more prevalent in previous times. I also feel that the overall novel is a bit of a mash-up, combining merely another of Austen's tales of romance and socio-economic standing with her supposed satirical take on the atmosphere-heavy Gothic novels of the period. The latter seems a bit too wedged into the former, with the titular Abbey itself not even appearing until two-thirds into the novel. Catherine's melodramatic predictions and fears may be overturned one by one by the banalities of reality in a fairly amusing manner, but it has little to do with the rest of the story, and when it runs its course it is immediately dropped. For that matter, it seems almost antithetical to Austen's earlier tangent upon novels of the day, including the famous quote “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” Catherine seems nothing but silly ... perhaps even stupid ... in her novel-infused anticipations of the Abbey, which Austen goes to great lengths to pick apart. I also do not find Henry entirely convincing as Catherine's partner (I don't feel a spoiler warner is really necessary here, since Austen novels are hardly in doubt as to their inevitable outcomes), in that he seems far too pleased to mock her at times. And of course, ultimately, I continue to be unsatisfied with Austen's perpetual focus on such a limited slice of the population, and its dances, meals, country homes, and love affairs.