Sophie Gee

What she does is to figure out

The form.

You called it the aesthetics, but I would call it the form of the novel.

What a novel needs and what it doesn't need.

She kind of came up with an MVP, a minimum viable product that you can't add anything to and you can't take anything away from.

And actually, I think that's one of the reasons that it's so instructive to look at Austen's Juvenilia.

It's very short.

It's very condensed.

And everything happens on either a cliffhanger or a kind of massive melodramatic explosion.

And she just realizes that the way you tell a story is by having very strongly accented, very gripping narrative beats.

And that's what she did.

So I think you're completely right.

And knowing these books, once some of our listeners go back to these stories,

these other models for Austen, I also think it allows us to read Austen herself with a new kind of admiration and sense of her richness and the breadth of the stories that she's trying to tell.

So happy birthday, Jane Austen.

Yes, here's looking at you, kid.

Happy birthday, Jane.

You've been listening to The Secret Life of Books.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.