The other day I made the kind of mistake no reader likes others to make: I gave away the ending of a novel to someone still reading it. I can’t believe I did that! I was talking with my daughter, M, about Jane Austen’s novel “Emma,” which she has been reading on her commute to work. (And I won’t make the same mistake again here, so if you, dear reader, haven’t read “Emma” and think you might read it someday, please stop reading this post now.) This is how it happened: Our discussion of “Emma” reminded me to tell M about my 7/31/11 post on how the author of the book “Agewise” theorized that Austen’s character Emma’s father had early dementia. I went on to say, as I did in the post, that Emma accepted her responsibility to take care of her father, despite knowing that it would probably keep her from marrying; I obliviously continued, saying that only because Knightley was willing to move into Emma’s house with her and her father was it possible for Emma to marry. Just as I made that last point, my daughter looked at me exasperatedly and pointed out that she had not finished the novel yet, and I had just given away the ending! I felt terrible, and apologized profusely. She was mildly annoyed with me, but took it well; she said she could see the ending coming, but wryly remarked that she would have preferred to discover it on her own. I think I am so immersed in the world of the Austen novels that I forget -- even though I knew it perfectly well in this case, and we had JUST been talking about it! -- that not everyone already knows the plots of the six novels backwards and forwards. I am thankful that my daughter wasn’t too upset, and I will try not to ever do that again! (Note that my book reviews, like all book reviews, describe a few plot points, but do not give away endings.)
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