Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

I was going on vacation to visit my son and his new baby, so I checked out the latest children's novel on overdrive so I would have something to read on the airplane on my Kindle.  So I get on the plane, and pull out my kindle, and low and behold, I hadn't downloaded it completely.  I am thinking, Oh No! 1 1/2 hours in the plane and nothing to read.  So I am looking through what is already on my Kindle, and I see "The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell."  Hooray!  I knew that I would not have any trouble passing the time on the plane pleasantly.

If you don't know Elizabeth Gaskell, she is a wonderful writer roughly contemporary, but a little later than Jane Austin.  She writes similar kinds of historical romances, but hers feature characters from one step lower on the social rung than Jane Austin's characters.  Molly is the daughter of a country doctor.  Her mother dies when Molly is quite young, but she has a happy life with her attentive father.  When Molly is 16, her father decides to remarry, and his new wife has a daughter just Molly's age.  The two girls become quick friends, but whereas Molly is shy and modest, Cynthia is worldly and gregarious.  As the two make their way through their later teens, we get to see their romances, and their folly, as well as their innate goodness and loyalty.  If you have seen the BBC miniseries of Wives and Daughters you have pretty much read the book.  Almost every important scene from the book is in the movie, and the actors have captured Gaskell's characters pretty well.  That said, I enjoyed reading the book immensely.  Gaskell wrote these books near the end of her life, and her knowledge of human nature, and her ability to suggest fully rounded and human characters is masterful. I didn't realize when I started to read the book on the plane how long it was, (607 pg in paperback) but I really did not get tired of it.  My only disappointment was to find out at the end that this is one of Gaskell's unfinished works.  So even thought the author left notes about how the story ends, we don't get to see Molly and her true love's final tender proposal scene.  I am equally unsatisfied with how the movie portray's the ending, though the last meeting in the rain, though not is the book, is pretty good.  (672 p. 1865)