The Jane Austen Book Club - Karen Joy Fowler

It was especially hard to be honest about her own behaviour, and she began to feel, long before she could put it into words, that there was something manufactured about her, not just in the diaries, but in the real world. (Whatever the hell that was.) The years receded behind her like a map with no landmarks, a handful of air, another of water. Of all the things she had to make up, the hardest was herself.

In fact Prudie wasn't pretty. She just pretended to be.

It seems to me that you can marry someone you're lucky to get or you can marry someone who's lucky to get you. I used to think the first was best. Now I don't know. Wouldn't it be better to spend your life with someone who thinks he's lucky to be there?

Prudie loved France; she'd made a life out of loving France. She'd never been, but she could imagine it perfectly. Of course, she didn't want to actually go. What if the trip was a disappointment. What if, once there, she didn't like it at all? Then what? It seemed to her that her husband, the love of her life, should have understood her well enough to know this.

When she looked at the pictures - her pleated dress, the flowers, Dean's politely drunken friends - she hardly remembered being there. It was a very nice wedding, people said afterwards, and the minute they said it, Prudie realizadshe hadn't wanted a very nice wedding. She'd wanted something memorable. They should have eloped and never told anyone.

But just occasionally she felt more lucky in her marriage than contended with it. She could imagine something better. She knew who to blame for this, and it wasn't Dean.

I don't wanna be Prudie anymore.