Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style

Rating:
Summary: Written with style
Review: Austen's achievement is to create a kind of magically anonymous narrator, one whose judgements and descriptions never seem to proceed from a person freighted with human foibles, but from an untouchably transcendent wit, and Miller's book teaches us how and why this is. It is a tour de force.

Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary work of criticism
Review: This is probably the most thoughtful and intelligent book that has ever been written on Austen. Miller addresses the basic problems that any critic of Austen's work must consider -- particularly the narrative stance for which she is famous -- and he carefully examines its component parts and its preconditions. It will be impossible for any future commentators on Austen to proceed without taking account of Miller's insights.