Enthusiasm by Polly Schulman
Jan. 21st, 2006 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zalenaThis morning I was woken by the knock of the UPS delivery guy. I opened the door in my ridiculous pink, flannel, pajamas with blue and green cats riding mopeds. He smiled at me and handed me a book. It was Polly Schulman's Enthusiasm, which uses Pride & Prejudice as one of its many literary themes for teen romance.
I crawled back into bed with the book and read it straight through, stopping only occasionally to scream with embarrassment or hilarity. The voice is so genuine, I took an absolute delight in experiencing the gentle romance, a year in the life of a teenage girl, best friend to an Enthusiast whose latest obsession is Jane Austen.
The book is deliciously light, without being trite, and biggest surprise of all, it actually had some decent poetry in it, including one fabulous acrostic sonnet around which much of the narrative centers. (The students have been studying Romeo and Juliet in English class. "How do we know they're in love?" the English teacher asks. Rejecting the students' entirely reasonable answers, she offers this: "They're first conversation takes the form of a sonnet." So does the happily ridiculous first conversation between Julie and her love interest.)
Julie ends up being more of an Eleanor Dashwood than she does an Elizabeth Bennet. And in some ways her love interest is more in the model of Mr. Ferris than Mr. Darcy. (Their interactions lack that arrogant spark, even as they are incredibly touching.) There is, however, an obnoxious Mr. Collins type suitor, which definitely is an appreciable touch.
The only underdeveloped part of the story comes on Julie's 16th bday, (Dec. 17th, Ms. Austen's bday as well) which is overshadowed by her stepmother's grief upon miscarrying a baby whose birthday would have also been Dec. 17th. Counting the months, Julie realizes that the baby was concieved long before her parent's divorce, and that her father had never intended to reconcile the way he had promised Julie and her mother.
There is also a very awkward and strange moment in a neighbor's greenhouse where she is caught crying by a friend's appealing, older, brother. They end up kissing, and are interrupted by her friend. Neither of these situations are resolved, but in some ways they make the book more appealing; to have messy edges and unexplained situations is much more like a real life.
Both these incidents share an aspect in that they are a peek beyond the haze of romance to a much more adult world in which courtly love plays no role, and bodies have interests their hearts may not share.
But teenage girls will swoon over the saintly love interest, too golden and chivalrous to be threatening, not even remotely sexual, even when circumstances force the two to spend the night, chastely, together in her bedroom.
It captured for me so much of that delight and fancy of crushing at that age, where sex is interesting, but not really a reality, and what a girl thinks of when she imagines love, is the warmth of a lovers arms, not the heat of his ardor.
I think one of the reasons books like Jane Austen's remain beloved is because they are essentially sexless. The novels are like one giant, intellectual, brick of foreplay. Sex enters the equation only as a rakish threat (like Willoughby,) or a mark of bad character (Wickham). Women in many ways still hide their feelings, even from other women, when it comes to the office and affairs of love. (As they do in Miss Austen's novels.) There is a sense that one's interest is not respectful or honorable. That the flush of interest is something that needs to be hidden behind long skirts and drawing room doors.
Sometimes I miss that girlhood fantasy of love, which seemed much more akin to a fluttery friendship plus kisses, sharing cocoa and warm sweaters, when the fire warms but won't burn. The addition of sex has made the world of romance much more dangerous, and its inhabitants in some ways more vulnerable. It certainly makes people more manipulatable, whether or not it adheres to the old addage that men play at love for sex, and women play at sex for love.
In anycase, I enjoyed it immensely, and it seems the perfect Valentine's Day book for a teenage girl who enjoys a good romance. Heck knows I need something so fresh and unjaded every now and then, even if I'm well beyond the phase where courtship doesn't end with a kiss.
http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/0399243895.asp
I crawled back into bed with the book and read it straight through, stopping only occasionally to scream with embarrassment or hilarity. The voice is so genuine, I took an absolute delight in experiencing the gentle romance, a year in the life of a teenage girl, best friend to an Enthusiast whose latest obsession is Jane Austen.
The book is deliciously light, without being trite, and biggest surprise of all, it actually had some decent poetry in it, including one fabulous acrostic sonnet around which much of the narrative centers. (The students have been studying Romeo and Juliet in English class. "How do we know they're in love?" the English teacher asks. Rejecting the students' entirely reasonable answers, she offers this: "They're first conversation takes the form of a sonnet." So does the happily ridiculous first conversation between Julie and her love interest.)
Julie ends up being more of an Eleanor Dashwood than she does an Elizabeth Bennet. And in some ways her love interest is more in the model of Mr. Ferris than Mr. Darcy. (Their interactions lack that arrogant spark, even as they are incredibly touching.) There is, however, an obnoxious Mr. Collins type suitor, which definitely is an appreciable touch.
The only underdeveloped part of the story comes on Julie's 16th bday, (Dec. 17th, Ms. Austen's bday as well) which is overshadowed by her stepmother's grief upon miscarrying a baby whose birthday would have also been Dec. 17th. Counting the months, Julie realizes that the baby was concieved long before her parent's divorce, and that her father had never intended to reconcile the way he had promised Julie and her mother.
There is also a very awkward and strange moment in a neighbor's greenhouse where she is caught crying by a friend's appealing, older, brother. They end up kissing, and are interrupted by her friend. Neither of these situations are resolved, but in some ways they make the book more appealing; to have messy edges and unexplained situations is much more like a real life.
Both these incidents share an aspect in that they are a peek beyond the haze of romance to a much more adult world in which courtly love plays no role, and bodies have interests their hearts may not share.
But teenage girls will swoon over the saintly love interest, too golden and chivalrous to be threatening, not even remotely sexual, even when circumstances force the two to spend the night, chastely, together in her bedroom.
It captured for me so much of that delight and fancy of crushing at that age, where sex is interesting, but not really a reality, and what a girl thinks of when she imagines love, is the warmth of a lovers arms, not the heat of his ardor.
I think one of the reasons books like Jane Austen's remain beloved is because they are essentially sexless. The novels are like one giant, intellectual, brick of foreplay. Sex enters the equation only as a rakish threat (like Willoughby,) or a mark of bad character (Wickham). Women in many ways still hide their feelings, even from other women, when it comes to the office and affairs of love. (As they do in Miss Austen's novels.) There is a sense that one's interest is not respectful or honorable. That the flush of interest is something that needs to be hidden behind long skirts and drawing room doors.
Sometimes I miss that girlhood fantasy of love, which seemed much more akin to a fluttery friendship plus kisses, sharing cocoa and warm sweaters, when the fire warms but won't burn. The addition of sex has made the world of romance much more dangerous, and its inhabitants in some ways more vulnerable. It certainly makes people more manipulatable, whether or not it adheres to the old addage that men play at love for sex, and women play at sex for love.
In anycase, I enjoyed it immensely, and it seems the perfect Valentine's Day book for a teenage girl who enjoys a good romance. Heck knows I need something so fresh and unjaded every now and then, even if I'm well beyond the phase where courtship doesn't end with a kiss.
http://www.teenreads.com/reviews/0399243895.asp
