The longest book I’ve read, and I doubt anything will top it (the audiobook is 102 hours, guys 😱). It’s written in the mid-18th century and is somewhat similar to Jane Austen’s writing but doesn’t quite match her style and lacks her humor.

“Clarissa” is an extremely slow-paced epistolary novel that has a gorgeous full-cast audiobook, and listening to it reminded me of hours-long life-updates type of conversations with friends. Since the book aims to provide examples of how to write letters, it’s very fascinating to observe such a detailed portrayal of 18th-century communication.

The story is about a young virtuous lady who catches the attention of rake Lovelace, who later becomes increasingly obsessed with testing her virtue. It’s not a romance, though the characters keep circling around ideas of romance, love, and marriage.

Everything starts with a strong animosity between Lovelace and Clarissa’s family. After her family starts suspecting that Clarissa is in danger from Lovelace’s attentions, they push her to marry a gentleman of their choosing, which Clarissa immediately refuses and begs her family to let her never marry anyone. They respond with expectations of her obedience and outrage at her first rebellion. This rift creates an opportunity for Lovelace to scheme how to capture and seduce (read: isolate, manipulate, gaslight) the most beautiful and virtuous lady.

The story unfolds through a series of letters between Clarissa and her correspondents (her bestie Anna Howe is the only sensible character in whole book), and between Lovelace and his, revealing his schemes and intentions that aren’t as obvious from Clarissa’s perspective.

For such a long book, it doesn’t do much; most of the characters aren’t as complex as page-count implies, the conflict is very simple, and it’s clear who is right and who is wrong. Clarissa is portrayed as the “perfect” victim, with most characters around her being either aggressors or passively sympathetic friends.

The story talks a lot about virtue, 18th-century misogyny, the dangers of isolating people from support systems, captivity, boundaries, rape culture (eerily similar to contemporary). I wouldn’t say the book explores these themes in an especially complex way, but it was interesting to see the 18th-century perspective on those issues.

And to be fair, I love extremely long and detailed slow-paced stories, and “Clarissa” (even if sometimes overwritten and repetitive) matched my preference; though 102 hours of the book was a bit too much even for me, and unfortunately I lost most of my interest closer to the end.