Review:

            Match maker match maker make me a match.
            
            
            
             "Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken." p354 and Emma is not one to contradict such a statement, as her mistaken ideas are both comical and bountiful. .
             Written by Jane Austen and published in 1815, Emma is the entertaining story of a young, lively woman, who devotes her time and energy into match making between friends and acquaintances. Although her intentions are of the noblest kind, Emma seems to add more confusion than help, to what already seems a tangle of relationships, right from the outset. With lively, contrasting characters, and a theme of marriage, one can already see the misunderstandings that could arise, before even opening the book. .
             Walter Scott, one of Emma's first critics, found the novel to have "even less of a story" than Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice, yet still admired her "knowledge of the world, and the peculiar tact with which she presents characters that the readers cannot fail to recognize." True, the storyline has a seeming lack of action, but that is to be expected for a book that rotates around domestic life. Indeed Austen's talents lie in her accurate depiction of everyday life and vivid character profiles.
             One might say, "read one Jane Austin and you've read them all," as all of her books tend to have to the same theme; multiple proposals, (at least two of which are directed towards the main character) a male role model of absolute gentility, as well as a male of dubious gentility, contentions between social circles, at least one ball, two marriages, and a happy ending for the heroine. Yet, "In a novel that delights in flirtation and embarrassment, the reader is constantly teased into trying to find out exactly what is going on." - Fiona Stafford. This is the interest that hooks the reader.