Written by a teenage Austen, what this novel lacks in her later command of feeling and interpersonal intricacy it makes up for in almost spunky commentaries (as with chapter 4, on misacknowledged virtues of novels) and in the author's tacit awareness (and knowing pardon) of the silliness of an imaginatively naive, yet unquestionably sincere, young lady. The novel is rich with self-aware laughter and Austen, as with Henry, bearing adoration despite (because of?) the good-nature flaws of the would-be heroine.