Emma (version 2)

Emma Woodhouse is handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and nothing but leisure. She also has an enemy she has not yet met: herself. Convinced she possesses a natural talent for reading hearts, Emma takes up matchmaking as her favorite amusement. She arranges couplings for her neighbors with perfect confidence, never suspecting that her own emotional blindness might be the true danger lurking in Highbury. Jane Austen constructed one of literature's most delicious comedies around a heroine no one but her creator could love, then dared readers to recognize themselves in Emma's smug certainties. As Emma's well-intentioned schemes unravel and her father faces an unsettling visitor, the gap between what Emma imagines and what actually exists collapses into something she cannot laugh away. The novel rewards patience: its wit sharpens on rereading, its emotional depth reveals itself gradually, and its portrait of self-deception remains startlingly modern.