Enthusiasm ~ Polly Shulman

“There is little more likely to exasperate a person of sense than finding herself tied by affection and habit to an Enthusiast.” Julie knows from bitter experience: her best friend, Ashleigh, is an Enthusiast. Ashleigh’s current fancy is also Julie’s own passion, Pride and Prejudice, and the heroine’s quest for True Love. And so Julie finds herself swept along with Ashleigh, dressed in vintage frocks and sneaking into a dance at the local all-boys’ prep school. There they discover several likely candidates for True Love, including the handsome and sensitive Parr. And Julie begins to wonder if maybe this obsession of Ashleigh’s isn’t so bad after all. . . . [Summary from B&N]

You know why I read this? I read it because I wanted something romantic. In the old-fashioned sense. And the name Jane Austen always conjures to mind a certain innocent, heady romantic air, which was just what I needed at the time. Also, I quite love the idea of an Enthusiast, and will admit to having a few Enthusiastic tendencies myself.

Right, so I read Enthusiasm for old-fashioned romance. And I kind of got it. Julie, the quietly ardent fan of Ms. Austen’s work, has several run-ins with a boy she dubs the “Mysterious Stranger.” She’s never spoken a word to him, but his bearing, his looks, his mysteriousness, calls to her. She’s so taken with this boy that she keeps him to herself. The decision to do so, of course, will come back to shoot her in the foot. But I haven’t reached that part of the story yet, so back I go, and here I mention Ashleigh. The Enthusiast. Julie’s best-friend, co-conspirator, and the one person who could, mistakenly but even so, dash all of Julie’s hopes for happiness.

I liked Julie. She was so determined to be generous in her friendship with Ashleigh, so willing to give her friend what she thought she wanted, that it would have been hard not to like her. And, yes, I saw some of myself in her: She was shy, careful with words both on the page and spoken, but also romantic. As a result I felt a great deal of empathy for her while reading about the various mishaps and misunderstandings that stood in her way of attaining her very own Mr. Darcy or, in this case, her Mysterious Stranger. And then there’s Ashleigh. Headstrong, extroverted, assured Ashleigh. I got her too, but only because I’ve been known to become fixated on a certain thing, pursuing it till it runs its course. They were as different as could be, but their friendship worked, it felt genuine and was really quite sweet.

And the romance, that was, too. Sweet, I mean. And, again, just what I wanted at the time.  The best example I can provide is a poem that Julie finds tacked to a tree outside her bedroom window:

Just let me wait a little while longer
Under your window in the quiet snow.
Let me stand here and shiver. I’ll be stronger
If I can see your face before I go.
All through the weeks I’ve tried to keep my balance.
Leaves fell, then rain, then shadows. I fell, too.
Easy restraint is not among my talents;
Fall turned to winter and I came to you.
Kissed by the snow, I contemplate your face.
O do not hide it in your pillow yet!
Warm rooms would never lure me from this place
If only I could see your silhouette.
Turn on your light, my sun, my summer love.
Zero degrees down here: July above.

If someone wrote me a poem like that in high school? Oh, I would have been a goner, sighing my way through the day. And there are so many bumps in the road that, when all is resolved, you feel that light, happy lift. You know the one I’m talking about? Well, it’s a lovely feeling. And most welcome.

I also appreciated the subtle reflections of Austen’s work in Enthusiasm. Julie is separated from her Mysterious Stranger by wealth and, as an extension, class; she attends public school, the boy a private school, she and her mom are cramped in a small house, the boy’s family owns several. Julie is too proud to ask her better off father for back to school clothes, and there is a fair amount of prejudice aimed at the boys attending Forefield Academy. And I’m sure there was more that I missed or have forgotten. But that it was there, what I did see, and that it was handled nicely kind of gave the novel that certain something else.

For me, this was a case of the right book at the right time.