This is abook about a woman. She is Catherine. She came to Bath with Mr and Mrs Allen. When she went to balls, she met a girl. She is Isabella. She became her friend. And there She met a man. He is Henry who is destined to marry her. This book is easy to read. So everyone can read easy. ( )

Northanger Abbey’s heroine is plain, ordinary Catherine Morland, a girl whom, the narrator tells, no one “would have supposed . . . to be born an heroine.” As the novel begins, Catherine is happy to learn that she is to go to Bath with her neighbors, the Allens. In Bath, she makes several new friends; principal among them are Isabella Thorpe and her brother John and Eleanor Tilney and her brother Henry. Soon, she is caught up in the drama of friends making competing claims on her company—and men making competing claims on her affections.

In the latter half of the book, Catherine travels to Northanger Abbey to spend time with Eleanor, and this half of the book is the part that made the strongest impression upon me when I first read it. Catherine is obsessed with finding a secret in the abbey. She’s been immersed in books like The Mysteries of Udolpho, and she can’t imagine an old abbey without some dreadful past waiting to be revealed. The secrets she finds aren’t so dark, but the betrayals she encounters are real.

One of the interesting things about this book is the contrast between the drama in Catherine’s head and the drama going on around her. Catherine is often described as being foolish and naive, but it’s to her credit that she does—eventually—figure out who her true friends are and who is manipulating her for their own purposes. But once the door of suspicion is opened, it’s opened too far. Her Gothic novels just gave her material to build her fantasies on.

This was my second time reading Northanger Abbey, and I enjoyed it. The narrator’s voice is often quite funny, and although I don’t find the main characters as endearing as those in Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion, I did like them, and, more important, I liked reading about them.

See my complete review at my blog. ( )

This is love story in 19th century in England.
The heroine is Catherine Morland who is A 17-year-old girl.
She fall in love with a handsome man , his name is Henry.

Catherine is so cute.She is single-minded and pure.
Opposite to her , her friend Isabella is too bad girl.
She got engaged to Catherine's brother, but she breached of promise because of change of heart.
So I don't like Isabella.

I enjoyed this story, but I couldn't understand Henry's charm.
He is earnest and very handsome. He is so impeccable.
I felt him tasteless. ( )

Austen's first full-length novel still shows the signs of an immature writer. Enjoyable but not up to the standards of the next five novels. ( )

I've not read any Austen since I was a teenager and thought it was about time I got reacquinted with her.

I gather that Northanger Abbey is the least popular of her books amongst her admirers and I'm not too surprised.

There's a lot of wit here and quite a bit of wisdom as well. The first part of the book, set in Bath, is good fun. I really liked the way Isabella's true character is gradually revealed to the reader. Other characters are less well though out though -John Thorpe is a bit of a cliche and not very credible while Austen barely takes any trouble to give any real personality to others such as Mrs Allen and Eleanor Tilney.

Even the main character, Catherine, is rather hard to get to grips with. When she arrives at the Abbey she develops a plainly ridiculous theory that General Tilney murdered his wife. This part of the book made little sense to me. It seemed out of character for Catherine, who fault is really to believe the best of people. Nor did it move the plot forward in any meaningful way.

Northanger Abbey is, of course, a parody of the gothic novel genre. If, like me, you haven't read the novels being parodied your missing much of the point and its hard to form a reasoned judgement of the qualities. However, the test of a true classic is whether it speaks to all the ages by telling us something about the human condition. I doubt Austen would be remembered much if her reputation depended on this novel. Nevertheless, I liked it enough to want to read a few more. ( )