No kidding. I always do a double-take whenever I hear someone cite Austen for realistic characters. The hero and heroine are the only characters who exhibit any dimensionality (and even then, not much). Most everybody else can be defined by a single term, an adjective attached to a name--'bookish', 'flighty', 'air-headed', 'pedantic'--and who never stray in thought, speech or behaviour from the one feature that, one realizes, defines the totality of their being. Her books are populated not by characters, but caricatures.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
