Product Description

How well do you really know your favourite author? Ace literary detective turned quizmaster John Sutherland and Austen buff Deirdre Le Faye challenge the reader to find out. Starting with easy, factual questions that test how well you remember a novel and its characters, the quiz progresses to a level of greater difficulty, demanding close reading and interpretative deduction. What really motivates the characters, and what is going on beneath the surface of the story? Designed to amuse and divert, the questions and answers take the reader on an imaginative journey into the world of Jane Austen, where hypothesis and speculation produce fascinating and unexpected insights. Whether you are an expert or enthusiast, So You Think You Know Jane Austen? guarantees you will know her much better after reading it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #265190 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Irish Times, May 21, 2005
You should get a kick out of answering any of the questions in this book correctly.

Irish Times, May 21, 2005
For those reading Austen for academic purposes the clear answers and insights could prove a valuable learning tool.

Irish Times, May 21, 2005
For those reading Austen for academic purposes the clear answers and insights could prove a valuable learning tool.

Customer Reviews

huge fun for austen fans, nice 'cheat sheet' for students
This is a short book - you can easily read it in an afternoon - but a real pleasure. It's presented as a quizbook but that's actually misleading: though the first part is composed of questions of varying difficulty, the second part, answering those questions, explains the significance of tiny details in Austen's novels, and is the reason why you'd actually want to buy it.

The readings do occasionally suffer from being a little glib and simplistic, but the book is both entertaining and useful. It's written in a very accessible style and would be a stimulating read for fans of Austen novels, as well as really helpful for students learning to decipher the sometimes complex subtext of Austen's writing.

Do note that the Juvenilia and minor novels are excluded, which undermine the sensitivity of some of the readings, but on most points you're in safe hands with Deirdre Le Faye, the ultimate authority on all things Austen.