There has never been a good screen adaptation of a Jane Austen novel. There have been plenty of films with plots and characters vaguely based on her work, many of them excellent. Who could forget Matthew Macfadyen’s trembling Mr Darcy confessing his passion to Elizabeth Bennet in the lashing rain, or Colin Firth’s entry to the Mr Wet Shirt contest 1813? Yet people who have only seen the screen adaptations think of Austen as the writer of dull, silly stories where nothing much happens.

Now imagine that you had to watch, with no context, someone slowly, patiently defusing a bomb. You would have no idea how much every tiny movement mattered; how high the stakes were for the smallest slip. Hollywood keeps mistaking Austen for a writer of Regency romances. She is not. She writes savage socioeconomic stories about bored, lonely women in lovely cages having to negotiate for the least worst outcome against a ticking clock.

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I kept coming back to this thought while reading The Book Was Better, which spends many very serviceable pages complicating the claim of its title. Louise Willder is not in fact making a case for the supremacy of prose, but tricking us into letting her opine about the entire process. What follows is what happens when a knowledgeable woman is allowed to talk without stopping about something that interests her.

I love this sort of thing, although not in an entirely healthy way. It is pornography for the sort of people who watch Only Connect for the puzzles – of which I am one. My family enjoyed days of respite while I indulged in one-sided grumbling at Willder’s obviously incorrect opinions........

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