emfiliane reviewed Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë (Penguin classics)
Review of 'Agnes Grey' on 'Goodreads'
1 star
An obvious Mary Sue story, this is the diary of a pompous, petulant child who takes a lousy wage job serving other pompous, petulant children (young and old). The modern analogue to this story plays out on Livejournal and Facebook every day, about as enlightening, although the sheer quantity of purple prose and extraneous conjunctions makes for an unintentionally hilarious read. Occasionally a single sentence stretches into most of a page.
Beware: Often, the narrator's chosen scenes are uninteresting speeches regarding characters at length who are never heard from again. The tedium of wondering whether any particular page advances any plot or is pure filler wears thin after a while. At other times, whole chapters are dedicated to describing the wholesome perfection of the narrator and her suitor, while others are devoted to the endless faults of all others.
The romance is nothing more than a crush that begins halfway …
An obvious Mary Sue story, this is the diary of a pompous, petulant child who takes a lousy wage job serving other pompous, petulant children (young and old). The modern analogue to this story plays out on Livejournal and Facebook every day, about as enlightening, although the sheer quantity of purple prose and extraneous conjunctions makes for an unintentionally hilarious read. Occasionally a single sentence stretches into most of a page.
Beware: Often, the narrator's chosen scenes are uninteresting speeches regarding characters at length who are never heard from again. The tedium of wondering whether any particular page advances any plot or is pure filler wears thin after a while. At other times, whole chapters are dedicated to describing the wholesome perfection of the narrator and her suitor, while others are devoted to the endless faults of all others.
The romance is nothing more than a crush that begins halfway through, carried on a few short conversations and much pining, and very suddenly wraps up in fairly stalkerish style toward the end. There is no conflict, no drama, no character development, just endless musing and whining followed by an abrupt happily ever after.
The sad part is that this could have been a great parody of upper class twits if it hadn't been bogged down by its over-serious style and author avatar. Agnes Grey is the Seinfeld of stories, 300 pages talking about nothing.
