Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen (Weldon, Fay) Review

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I treasure this book. Reading Fay Weldon is like having a very best friend who's read everything you love, has brilliant insights into literature and life, and is absolutely hilarious. She meets that need the passionate reader feels at the end of a wonderful book, to discuss it with someone whose opinion is worth having.
"Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen" takes the form of letters from a writer to her niece, Alice, who's complained of being forced (!) to read Jane Austen. (I remember how utterly lame I thought PRIDE AND PREJUDICE was when I was 13--nobody had explained to us that it was supposed to be funny! Thank God I tried it again years later.) In the course of trying to make Austen (and all literature) accessible to her niece, the writer takes her on a marvelous journey into the city of the imagination.
I keep starting sentences and then deleting them, because writing accurately about this book is tricky. Its genius is perhaps that the book illuminates the relationship of writer to reader without being dry or academic--it is, in fact, thoroughly entertaining.
If you LOVE books, if you spent half your childhood curled up in some corner reading, if you try to foist books onto your friends--you will recognize the city into which Weldon leads you, and you will feel welcomed and at home.
All in all, a fab read. Treat yourself!

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