This novel is 200-odd pages of Peacock viciously deconstructing every one of his contemporaries, and it is absolutely wonderful.

He paints an absolutely scathing image of the Romantic era as a whole, mocking everything from his literary friends to the Gothic novel format. Every character is wrapped up in their own narrow ideology and judges every single event based upon it, leading to an utterly ridiculous perception of the titular Abbey.

(I do think my opinion is swayed by the fact that I've been studying the Romantic era and most of the writers Peacock is mocking; if you're less of an English nerd, it may be less entertaining to you. The language is also deliberately heavy and elaborate, so it's very easy to lose your place within it.)