Emma (version 4)

Emma Woodhouse is twenty-one, beautiful, clever, rich, and absolutely certain she knows what's best for everyone. She has one great talent: seeing matches that others miss and bringing them together. But her greatest gift is also her blind spot. When she takes the shy Harriet Smith under her wing, she sets in motion a chain of romantic miscalculations that will test every assumption she holds about herself and others. This is Austen's most corrosive examination of self-deception, written with a lightness of touch that makes it read like sparkling conversation. Emma believes she reads hearts better than anyone, yet she cannot see her own. She confuses her imagination with insight, her own desires with those of others. The novel humbles her slowly, painfully, through a series of small disasters that strip away her certainties. It is the gentlest of Austen's comedies and perhaps her sharpest. For readers who love watching a brilliant mind discover its own limits.