I read a little in Austen’s “Northanger Abbey” today, and as I often do with her writing, I focused more on the style of the sentences than on the plot. Her stories are not especially stirring or gripping, but her sentences are some of the finest I’ve ever read. Whether she labored over them or whether they simply flowed effortlessly from her pen, her sentences, one after another, are small works of art.

As for the story, Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe are vacationing in Bath, and have met the ladies’ brothers are striking up a friendship.