Ormond

Edgeworth's Ormond is a great book, comparable to the best of Scott and Austen. In it, we follow the young Ormond from his wealthy adolescence with his uncle; a sojourn with another, more eccentric uncle in the Black Islands; to a grand tour of Paris before the revolution; and to his mature return to Ireland. The mirroring of political tensions in pre-revolutionary France with conflicts between Irish political factions are further complicated by Ormond's own allegiance to the English mililary.This novel is more than a romance, more than a coming-of-age novel, and more than a historical novel. It possesses the same melange of styles one would expect from an heir of Sterne and Swift, and a progenitor of Le Fanu, Joyce, and Beckett. If you have read all of Austen and wonder what to read next, Ormond should be a delight.