A review by smartinez9
Evelina by Frances Burney

5.0

Genuinely engaging and affecting. I would say her characters are almost Dickensian in their idiosyncrasies and Dostoyevsky-esque in their absurdity, but she predated them both. The twists were predictable and the prose was at times melodramatic, but that feels inevitable for a late 18th century novel that otherwise feels quite modern in its discourse. Vastly preferred the Captain to Mr. Villars. Wild that “you can’t reject me, I’m a nice guy” is at least 240 years strong.