just a reader.

More from Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen

Having written the previous sentence I stretched out my hand for Northanger Abbey and found it wasn't there. I had left my copy somewhere, in Abu Dhabi, or New York or Colchester, how am I to know? Whereupon I wept, reproached, and disrupted the entire household and became obsessed with the notion that I had not enough bookcases.

Fay Weldon,  Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen.

Recently read: Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen

How can I possibly tell you how to run your life? I am a novelist and your aunt, not a seer. I suppose I could offer a few general rules. For example:

1. Love your mother if you possibly can, since she is the source of your life.
2. Love men if you possibly can, since they are the source of your gratification.
3. Reform yourself, as well as the world.
4. Agree with your accusers, loudly and clearly. They will shut up sooner.
5. Worry less about what other people think of you, and more about what you think of them.

Fay Weldon, Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen.