My favorite Austen. This is a reread and also my first audible book.
I enjoyed it overall. It was a free version I found on the net so there were a few different readers for different chapters. I found one extremely irritating as she pronounced words wrongly. The worst was calling Captain Benwick, Cp. Ben Wick!!!!!
Also the readers changed completely for the last chapter and I didn't think she did justice to 'the letter'!

Still a 5* read for me. With every reread it gets better and better. This is a lovely little edition. I have them all in this collection now. There is a nice glossary at the end.

I wanted to read this before the new Netflix adaptation comes out later this year.

I found it quite slow paced but things do pick up in the last 100 pages. I still love Austen's writing, humour and wit but didn't care as much about this book compared to Emma and Pride and Prejudice.

Loved when Anne corrected a man about "women being more fickle in love" by mentioning that he was basing his opinion on books... written by men!

I did watch the 2007 movie and that kissing scene has given me enough secondhand embarrassment for a lifetime XD

Not my favorite by her but also not my least (sorry Northanger Abbey!)

I was not ready for this book. Though Jane Austen never fails to amaze me, I didn't expect to love Persuasion so much that it almost got my head spinning; dare I say this might be my favourite so far?

In many ways, this book follows the Austen pattern. There are rich, upper-class snobs; poor, cast out derelicts; complicated family dynamics and an unapologetically feminist heroine — all furnished with satirical social commentary. It's not easy to explain exactly what sets this one apart for me.

Anne Elliot is a sweet but shy 27-year-old that lost her one chance at a happy ending seven years before the novel takes place. She had been persuaded to sever the connection she had to Captain Wentworth, a man lacking in fortune. Captain Wentworth left the area, leaving their love to simmer down. Anne's father, deep in debt, is forced to sell his house to Mrs Croft, Captain Wentworth's sister — which brings him back to Kellynch.

n  "More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much, perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him — but she had been too dependant on time alone."n

Maybe I love this book so much because it is essentially a study of time, and its effects on human emotion and weakness. It also explores the value of second chances, and how timing actually is everything. The story isn't high-paced or drama-filled, which gives the reader time to explore more simplistic and subtle themes. That only added to the power of this novel for me!

Anne Elliot is a very different main character. She is surrounded by excessively vain and egocentric family members but manages to stay true to herself, despite constantly being pushed around and treated as a nuisance. She is patient and seems to cast away all expectations when it comes to other people (even when so much is expected of her). What's interesting is that Anne is always placed at the centre of every situation, without anybody realising it. Nobody recognizes her worth, but everything revolves around her at the same time.

n  "'So altered that he should not have known her again!' These were words which could not but dwell with her. Yet she soon began to rejoice that she had heard them. They were of sobering tendency; they allayed agitation; they composed, and consequently must make her happier."n

The first half of the book focuses mainly on the ridiculous side characters, but we begin to know and love Anne as the story goes on. The other characters start to acknowledge Anne's worth, and that causes a noticeable shift in Anne's talkativeness. This happens around the time that the slow-burn romance comes to its climax — but it actually has nothing to do with Captain Wentworth. Anne did it all on her own.

n  "You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever."n

The power of Persuasion is the delicacy of everything. It's deep, it's lovely, it's perfectly balanced — a new favourite for sure.

---------------

Additional Notes:
- I love how Austen casually scattered the title in random dialogues throughout the book
- The letter the letter the letter the letter the letter THE LETTER

[June 12, 2013] There are many reactions that an Austen fan gets when they confess themselves as such. Perhaps a shared fangirl squee. Maybe an "of course you are." Plenty of times it's the admission of not getting Austen. Of not enjoying "romance novels." Of being confused or bored by her prose.

I carefully say that I am a fan, as I haven't yet made my way through all her works. More than anything, I love Pride and Prejudice with a deep, nostalgic, I've-read-it-a-million-times love.

A friend of mine recently picked this up for a reread, and her reading updates inspired me to give Persuasion a try. It took about three or four chapters before I liked Anne Elliot immensely and reading through the rest of the book was surprisingly easy. What Austen writes is more nuanced than just a romance novel. Her books, Persuasion included, are full of humor and smart commentary and little treats throughout the narration.

I think it's all the better that my first time reading Persuasion has happened in my mid-twenties. Where while reading Pride and Prejudice I am all giggles and swoons, Persuasion had me relating and nodding sagely. Anne Elliot is the Austen character I've found so far the easiest to relate to. We've all had our opinions persuaded, we've all felt overlooked, we've all questioned the decisions of our family, we've all questioned our own past decisions. There we find Anne as she finds herself once again moving in the same social circle as Captain Wentworth, "the one that got away," to put it tritely.

Anne is to be appreciated as a more mature Austen character. She has many admirable traits and many quirks that made me like her. I loved that at 27, and sort of lost in the shuffle of her life, losing consequence and being overlooked, her happiest moments are when she feels useful. Yes, girlfriend. I also loved that often times, she had to retreat, and sit in silence and consider her own thoughts.

Though I didn't feel the relationship between Wentworth and Anne quite as much as Darcy and Elizabeth, I loved the themes the plot set up let Austen explore. I loved the relationship between Admiral and Mrs. Croft. It is not often that Austen gives us peeks of long lasting, happy marriages, and in the Crofts she comments on what she thought it ought to be. Sharing the reigns while driving sort of thing. A second favorite moment came when Anne was discussing the differences in feeling between women and men. More than agreeing with anything that was said, I loved it in context. And, of course, that conversation led the way for THE romantic moment in the book, Wentworth's letter to Anne.

At the end, I can't really compare this to Pride and Prejudice. I loved that one longer and better. That said, I also can't give Persuasion anything less than five stars. For any faults you might find in Austen, she was not a one hit wonder. Here she provides another book to fall in love with, and I have no doubt that I will visit Anne again. And again, and again.

[May 10, 2014] Marked for a reread.

There is so much to be said about how much I love Austen and how I much I love rereading. I love sinking into a story and both knowing how it will play out, expecting all my favorite parts, waiting for all my favorite lines, and yet not knowing what new details or elements will stand out.

At a time in my life when I've recently switched jobs and other big decisions loom on the horizon, I just felt really connected with Anne's desire to be useful, appreciated and with the best company. I love how even tempered she is and how smart and how gracious.

Also, this time around I was so taken with how well Anne knows Wentworth. She sees his actions and she very clearly can deduce what he's thinking. She realizes when there is hope and acts accordingly and there only seems to be a steady progression and not a back and forth and a will they won't they. It's a mature progression and I love how even in the uncertainty of this relationship, we see Anne's smarts and even temper. Even as she suffers, she's gracious.

Definitely a favorite and one I will continue to revisit every year or two.

[July 20, 2016] Marked for reread.

[July 28, 2017] Marking for reread. Apparently I'm making reading this for booktubeathon a THING. I love this so very much. Many reasons why above.

[July 21, 2018] Without even realizing, and even though I'm not participating in booktubeathon this year, I've read this again in July. Marking for my yearly reread. This time, I was really very emotional about Anne and all of her suffering gracefully. No one in this story deserves Anne Elliot.

[2019] I reread Persuasion 3-4 times in 2019, at least. Reviews above but worth repeating the Anne Elliot is the best of them.

[2020] I'm laughing at my earlier assertions that I will read this book once every year or so, as Persuasion has become a book I read for comfort, multiple times a year. 2020 was real bad, so I lost count how many times I cracked this open, or put this on play, just to get a little joy. And so, I'll mark it one time for the year. In 2020, I certainly read this thing and it certainly soothed my soul.

[2022] My most notable reread of this book in 2022 was prior to the Netflix adaptation. I particularly paid attention to the humor in this one, best known for being Austen's most "mature" work with one of her most sober heroines. There is plenty of humor to be found in Persuasion, courtesy mostly of the narrator but also the ridiculousness of the Elliot's. Anne is often held up as the introverted character and while she is more quiet and serious, I never particularly read her as introverted. She might be but that's not her leading characteristic to me. She's often read that way and relegated to the corners because she's single and heartbroken. Everyone who takes a chance to speak to her, though, finds her lovely and warm and engaging. I love Anne with my whole heart.

4.5 ☆

She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.

Persuasion had been published in December 1817, a few months after the demise of Jane Austen. As we now know, Austen was in the winter of her life, dying from a mysterious ailment, while working on this particular novel. Death and lost opportunities were common motifs in Persuasion, which was an introspective romance featuring a heroine teetering on the edge of spinsterhood.
n  

n    but Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister: her word had no weight; her convenience was always to give wayn  

n
Anne Elliot, age 27, was the middle daughter of a silly and conceited parent, Sir Walter Elliot. She was her mother's daughter in character, but unlike her late mother, Anne possessed no tempering influence upon her father. For Sir Walter's late wife had ameliorated and hidden his shortcomings until her death in 1801. And while the eldest daughter Elizabeth, age 29, had assumed her late mother's social role, her pride showed no inclination to check her father's excesses. By 1814, his spending, suitable for a baronet, had attained ruinous proportions.
n  

n    Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation. ... He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion. n  

n
As Sir Walter had no surviving son and the estate was entailed, his only recourse was to retrench and to lease their ancestral home of Kellynch Hall in Somersetshire. This situation was a disgrace that Anne's father and sister didn't seem to recognize. And as the Elliot family went their separate ways in September 1814, it triggered a sequence of events that disturbed Anne's hitherto quiet country life.
n  

n    [Bath] was a much safer place for a gentleman in his predicament: - he might there be important at comparatively little expense. n  

n
Sir Walter, Elizabeth, and a sycophantic young widow who had secret ambitions relocated to Bath. Anne has been tasked with preparing Kellynch for the arrival of the tenants, the newly prosperous Admiral and Mrs. Croft. Once Anne temporarily settled into her married younger sister Mary's family home a few miles away, she got a front row seat to the upcoming drama. Mrs. Croft's younger brother, Captain Frederick Wentworth, has been furloughed after the capture of Napoleon and has been invited to stay with them. Frederick and Anne had been engaged in 1806.
n  

n    He was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit, and brilliancy; and Anne, an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling. - Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she hardly any body to love; but the encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail. They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love. n  

n
Frederick had been Anne's first, and apparently last, chance of love. Eight years later, these two retained a palpable awareness of the other. Not since the very impetuous Marianne Dashwood and John Willoughby do I recall such a passionately-charged (albeit stealthy) relationship in an Austen novel. And uncharacteristically, Austen heavily relied upon body language in Persuasion. Read it to discover in Austen's twilight whether she chose a happy ending for her mature character who seemed destined for a solitary life.

Persuasion wasn't as sparkling as Pride and Prejudice nor as ambitious as Mansfield Park. Nevertheless, Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel for it feels very close to Austen's heart. For this re-read, I chose Persuasion: An Annotated Edition by Robert Morrison. The annotated version provided enriching context and confirmed my belief that this was no simple romance.

Persuasion was Austen's platform to express some final opinions. In my initial read decades ago, I had not noticed just how frequently death, injuries, and weaknesses colored this novel with the realities of the early 19th century.  Many characters lost family members who had died off-stage, so to speak. One minor character was permanently disabled and two others sustained injuries during the main storyline.  All of these contributed to an occasionally somber tone and depicted the world as a precarious milieu. This was reinforced by Austen's choice of setting her story in the summer of 1814, after Napoleon had been captured and sent off to Elba. But that had given Europe a false sense of security for Napoleon would escape and amass more forces that culminated in the 1815 Battle at Waterloo. In this kind of reality, people either retreat to safety or adopt a carpe diem mentality. But what could females in the restricted Georgian period do?

Austen presented very obvious contrasts between the aristocracy (even though a baronetcy occupied the lowest rung of that hierarchy) and the rising professional classes. I'd hate to be the person that she had satirized with her sketch of Sir Walter. In her personal life, Austen had brothers who were successfully climbing the naval ranks and thus their place in society. [I wasn't impressed, however, by Britain's legalized piracy, a tradition popular since at least the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.] Austen further highlighted her views on gendered marriage roles, friendships, and hospitality through these two different strata of society. The author even went so far as to include a subversive observation from Anne that the Crofts were the deserving residents of Kellynch because they had assumed the responsibilities of the property. All this was in marked opposition to the regard Austen had for the landed gentry in her previous novels.

Through Mary's sisters-in-law -- Henrietta and Louis Musgrove, Austen created romantic entanglements and illustrated her beliefs about female education and what constituted strength of character. For the latter, Austen distinguished between a mind choosing to honor principles versus one that was purely obstinate in its desires. As a character snarked, n  

n    a persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favor of happiness as a very resolute character. n  

n
I had lost the element of surprise since this was a re-read. But I had easily become immersed in Anne Elliot and her changing world. Even with the addition of the notes, this was a fast read that captivated me for two days when I should have been attending to other concerns. On an intellectual level, Persuasion merits 4 stars, but its emotional impact elevated it to 5 stars, a perennial favorite.


*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*

First Reading a long time ago

I've read all of Jane Austen's novels and short stories. Persuasion is my absolute favorite because of the themes of constant love, forgiveness, and second chances.

It also contains the most romantic love letter I have ever read:

n  n    I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F. W.n  n

4.5/5

I powered through this reread for an Emma tag team two-tome essay due in less than a fortnight, so if this review seems myopic in one or more particular directions, that's why. The brutally paced parsing of the text this time around is probably why I found the introduction and afterword so insufferable. Here I was, armed to the teeth with the single minded focus of hacking through the narrative foliage for tidbits of the ideal male mate as prescribed by Austenian code, only to be faced with nearly thirty page long bookends of Sparknote analysis and chewed out trivialities. It's the result of the worst sort of blinkered presumption that, wherein since English isn't rocket science and Austen is Austen, a minimum level of effort is more than acceptable when it comes to getting at the marrow of the stakes at hand. Mind you, anyone who tries to take my words and use them to condemn the Millennials or the immigrants or whatever newfangled ideologies are disturbing their self-complacent entitlement can take a hike. Austen knew what she was about when she made every novel of hers a matter of money, so if you want more of me and less of the status quo, be sure to have your ballots and checkbooks in hand.

I've done enough rereading this past school quarter to no longer look at it as most certain slog if done within five years of the previous, but there's also the quality school environment to consider. Beyond all the bureaucracy of identity politics (I'd gladly trade places with the neurotypicals whose biggest concern is being hated by those who they think they want to "help"), there's nothing I love more than new critical perspectives, new paradigms, new ways of chewing through texts which, for all that, hold up admirably enough to justify the expenditure. The hardship, of course, is that I am no longer the person who wrote that first review below after reading the book in community college. I am the one who's encountering the text with the new abstract knowledge of Austen's family having been involved in the slave trade and the new practical knowledge of negotiating with those whose responsibility for college students amounts to little more than a subtle sadism. Deep down, I still enjoy Anne Elliot's character traits on an instinctual level, but I would no longer hesitate on tearing it and this novel apart to suit my analytical purposes. An underdog complex, perhaps, especially when considering this didn't dislodge P&P as my favorite after all, but I want to see the eight-and-a-half years of angst and painful self-reflexivity, not the pretense that everything worked cause, really, nothing had to change.

Having now moved through the complete set of complete novels, there is a much stronger feel for the world within which the heroine moves with all its self-obsessed people, manipulating people, disabled people, female people, children, colonialism, sailors, class, and the socioeconomic politics of gender than there was in Sense and Sensibility, in the sense of serious consideration that does not pretend the current hegemony is the universal truth. Propriety no longer bows in the face of masculine entitlement, and what plot movement there was in the form of death and degradation was not passed over with the modicum of effort that is deus ex machina. One could make an argument for development/complication/experimentation of prose and grammar, but I am not such a one. I took this class called Jane Austen and Her Peers with the aim of enhancing an experience that had thus far been a little here, a little there, sizable amounts of love mingling with medium levels of indifference and even some measures of hatred. I'd say I got my money's worth.


P.S. Completely missed the part where one of the characters criticizes the main antagonist as having a small dick the first time around. The joys of analysis.

---

1/27/15

4.5/5

For every work I read and review on here, I read about three decent sized novel's worth of online fanfic. This has lead to some weird and wonderful critical analysis skills, an example being my discussion of a key plot point that started off smooth, spazzed out of giddy control, and ended with a "framing of narratives" commentary that I didn't even know I could do. I blame the afterword of this edition with its "Here's ten academic jargon things that Austen was great at!" that totally messed with my shipping flow, but hey. The prof liked it well enough, even though I'm certain my "He figured out he actually wanted to do the thing by talking about something completely different from the thing" raised no small number of eyebrows.

Anyway. Persuasion! Persuasion. I'm so glad the class picked this up because, one, christ this class is a sausage fest, and two, this book is so clever that I absolutely must to do my first paper on it. You'd think I'd have picked up on this during my three previous Austen books, but either I don't remember them that well or this last one of hers is another kettle of fish entirely. The introduction supported my suspicions a measure with talk about class differences and the coming of a nouveau riche type excitement that Austen was actually pretty okay with, but what really got me was the rhetoric and how invested the author was in stretching those three terms as far as they could go.

Unlike the Swift and Pope and Gay that came before in class with their satire and misanthropy and lazy ass indictment of humanity via, you guessed it, women and non-Europeans, Austen's invested in making things work. It comes across the clearest in this work because of the problems she's wrestling of landed gentry versus incoming rich Navy personnel, age, gender roles, cultural ideologies formed by unbalanced representation, and what, ultimately, is right in terms of when, why, and how. This, mind you, is all coming across through a "comedy of manners", a romance wherein everything must happen carefully, subtly, and with the most fine-tuned pieces of rhetoric that English can afford. In short, persuasions of varying overtness and strength prove equally true under various circumstances that no one can always get the right of, or as put by this gem of a gem of a quote:

n  There, he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the daring of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.n

Morality does not operate in a vacuum, for better or for worse, and any author who can successfully wrestle a meaning from it deserves praise. Stigma against drawing room romances be damned, a writer's apprehension is not limited by the share of humanity they were given. Besides, if you want to be able to appreciate the Deep Universal Things and giggle at the same time, Austen's your woman.

P.S. For all my praise, I didn't like this as much as Pride and Prejudice because of the comparatively low potential for hate-sex. Not academically professional at all, but true.

Talk about persuasion! In Jane Austen's Persuasion our hero and heroine are neither interesting nor do they have an obvious magnetic attraction for one another. As readers we always knew they'd get together in the end, and yet we're still glad they do. That's the power of Jane Austen's persuasion!

Unlike in some of Austen's better work, there is a twist, but not much of a triangle. And I felt the twist to be more Bronte-esque, as in the revealing of a horrible secret. Persuasion lacks a complicated plot, and what it does have doesn't come even remotely close to that of Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility. There's plenty of irritating busybodies, ala Emma, but Austen thankfully refrained from making them too irritating. No, here there is a good balance of silly characters and solid salts-of-the-earth.

On a personal note, I found it refreshing to read so much about the navy in this book. During the Napoleonic Wars, in which Britain fought France over two decades, their superior navy was an integral part of their eventual success. Some of Austen's books are meant to take place during this tumultuous time and yet the war is hardly ever mentioned. Occasionally the female characters will fawn over some officer or other, but that's about it. In Persuasion, a naval captain is our heroine's love interest, an admiral takes lodging at her stately home and numerous other gentlemen of the navy fill out the periphery. Heck, a ship or two is even referred by name! I don't demand, or even think a book whose focus is meant to be on women finding love should be all about what the men are doing during a war, but it's nice to see that the women at least realize their country is at war, as it's nice to see Austen was not completely insensible of it either. It is quite correct that she should devote the bulk of her work to describing the home front war women of her society fought...the war to conquer a suitable man.

Anne fucked up and turned down the love of her life.



Not that she'd really admit it.
Even at the end! She was all, I was right to listen to advice from my elders, but she did admit that they should have revisited the he's not eligable situation a lot sooner.
Also, she was kind of doing the best she could with what she had to work with back in the day. And honestly, how was she (at such a young age) to know the difference between a guy who says he's going to work hard and make it big and does, and a guy who says he's going to work hard and make it big, but turns out to be a lazy doofus?
Because we all know that one poor idiot who didn't ask enough questions, thought that love was the only thing you needed, and trusted in her man's good sense too much.
tsk



So, yes. Anne did lose the love of her life due to caution. But! She also didn't end up with some hippie stoner who sat on her couch all day and talked about his plans to teach the cat to play the harmonica.
Life's a balancing act, ladies.



I like this one. Anne isn't some twit who sits around blubbering about it, but you also get that she loved Frederick very much. It's the age-old story of the one that got away and you're genuinely rooting for her the entire time.
I gotta admit, I wasn't all that crazy about him at the beginning of the book when it looked like he was flirting with the cute young ladies in front of her. But then I realized that she had broken his seafaring heart into sad little pieces, and maybe he deserved a bit of payback.



Ok, so the most memorable part of the story to me was this scene where this married couple were driving along in their carriage and she kept telling him how to drive. <--you nailed it, Jane!
Just goes to show you, underneath it all, things aren't really much different.
And it's nice to know that people have always been kind of nuts.



Recommended for Austen fans.

Greta Scacchi was the narrator of the audiobook I listened to and she did a lovely job if you're interested in listening rather than reading.

It’s been a while since I’ve read an Austen novel. I found that I had to acclimatize myself to the writing style , which took around 2 chapters, but after that I was all in.

Anne Elliot is our heroine in this novel. She is the middle of three daughters. The eldest is the prima Dona, the youngest is a whiny, attention seeker. Anne is the steadfast one, the obedient one. Seven years before she was in love with Frederick Wentworth but she did not accept his proposal because of all the “ persuasion” pushed on her.

Anne is now 27 years old and this novel is about her coming into her own. I loved watching her realize which people were worth having in her life and which weren’t. She was the rejected one in her family, but now she encounters new friends who love her for who she is.

It was wonderful being back in Jane Austen’s world. Anne Elliot was so special that I will never forget her. Frederick Wentworth has surpassed Mr. Darcy in my heart.

I won’t wait so long again before I pick another of her novels.

Update: 01 August 2023
I just finished listening to Persuasion and loved it just as much on audio as I did when I read it. Excellent narration by Nadia May.
Every book I finish by Austen is instantly my favourite, but I think Persuasion beats them all.

Published: 1818

there is hope for men, i repeat THERE IS HOPE FOR MEN

n  Update July 2023: Quick reread of the letter chapter.n

I want to write love letters like Frederick Wentworth when I grow up.
____________________________

n  n    Whether former feelings were to be renewed, must be brought to the proof.n    n  n

That would be the perfect description of the story of Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth told in this novel, were it to be summed up in one sentence.



The trouble with classics that everyone reads, willingly or not, is that they're so well-known and so much has been said about them that leaves first-time readers feeling like they cannot add anything useful. But there's always something to be said when they leave an impression on you, and this one, my third novel by Austen is to date the one that left the best impression perhaps because of age, as I'm older than the first time I read this author and failed to appreciate her literary work's worth beyond the entertaining factor, and maybe also because group reads are a valuable experience that help one to see things from different perspectives just by reading how each reader reacts to the same events.

Based only on the novels I've read so far, my impression was that Austen is excellent with female characters and also excels at writing gentlemen that, even now two centuries later, have many a girl swooning, but she's never seemed so good at writing couples in my eyes. Which is strictly my personal opinion, because I am sure many will jump forward to object and name Lizzie & Darcy, for example. That's not my experience. Mine is one of loving a character more than the other, of preferring the female lead, but not the hero; or I can love the hero and not the heroine, but I never experienced liking both on equal footing.

I bring this forth because that's one of the aspects I most often bemoan is lacking in romantic stories, be it romance novels or just mainstream fiction with a love story as part of the larger plot: that it's rare to find couples in which you love both the man and the woman. And Persuasion is one of those for me. I quite like Captain Wentworth despite his lack of a POV and his little "onstage time," I like that he has his flaws (yes, they may not be so evident due to the lack of a POV, but he does) and is aware of his less-than-gentlemanly feelings, owns to his impulsiveness and is in general more willing to take risks. And it also helps that he's not a stuck up snob and that, unlike many heroes, he doesn't have a title nor wealth nor is specially gifted but has earned what he possesses. I appreciate a self-made man, one of those who sweat blood and break their backs to get something in life, which is also why I am not impressed by a certain other popular Austen hero.

But Anne . . . Ah, dear Anne. She is a sweet girl, yes; very selfless, sensible, helpful, level-headed, altruistic, unpretentious, pretty, well-mannered, perceptive . . . Have I left something out? Not likely, she has so many qualities that her one flaw is risible weighed against all of those. And no, I don't share the view that lack of flaws and an overall very good moral character is automatically to be classified as either "one dimensional" characterisation or a sign of Mary-Sueness, and I disagree with the idea that "gray" and "flawed" mean good characterisation by default. People can be quite good and moral and borderline saintly in real life as they can be complete monsters to rival any literary villain, so when finding such a person in literature, I can believe it. So, what's my objection here, if I have one?

Point of view manipulation, in short. Anne is the POV in this tale, which is fine as it's her story, but it also means that the reader is brought in to sympathise with her over anyone else regardless. And that's fine too, it's the nature of POVs. But Austen doesn't stop at having us see the world through Anne, which is more than amply enough to sympathise with and love her. No, she goes the extra mile and spells it out that Anne is right, and she does so bringing others down into the mud. For a start, she writes Anne to stand out heads above everyone else as the moral one by bringing her family low: the entire Elliot clan are utter cretins, so snobbish and superficial that one can't but dislike them. That can be believed, because again, families have members with different personalities and opinions, so that'd not be so bad. But this is written in a way that the Elliot girls don't have any redeeming qualities at all, they're mere foils to Anne, a contrast to her goodness so it shines brighter. Her father, Sir Walter, is actually the only one of the lot that does have one good quality, and he seems to at last be learning, softening and becoming willing to let go of his rigid and shallow ideas on class and looks for the sake of tender feelings and a possible new wife. And instead of giving him a chance to continue this character evolution in a positive manner, what does Austen do? She makes Mrs Clay turn out to be the untrustworthy and hypocritical upstart that Anne, who else, always thought she was. Which again serves to highlight Anne's moral superiority at the expense of other characters in-story and takes away the sting of her only flaw: that she is snobbish and does have a sprinkle of that superficiality her family is hated for, because her attitude towards the woman is due to that, but when it's confirmed explicitly what kind of woman Mrs Clay was, it's all right that Anne is a snob because she was right. For additional kicks, the woman is paired up with Mr Elliot, the cousin-suitor, who also is subjected to the same plot fail. Anne had no feelings for him and was a bit wary of him, guessing out he had something that was not quite right; but that wasn't enough and William is revealed to be such a sleazeball and that, effectively, neutralises him as a romantic rival, and confirms that Anne was right all along, taking away the dilemma of struggling between two good men and making her choice of Wentworth much easier. That was just overkill.

So these are, in sum, my issues with the novel, stemming from not being fond of sympathy ploys that are construed too blatantly at the expense of other characters within the story. It may be the storytelling style that was en vogue when Austen was writing, and perhaps also because she had no chance to edit this better, but I also think it's her own doing, too, because in the other books of hers that I read it's different.

Nevertheless, this is certainly a great read and one of her best stories, quite romantic and intimate. And worth reading, and rereading, and then rereading again (for the letter!).

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October 2015 buddy read at the Persuasion Group Read with Candace and Andrea. Thanks also to QNPoohBear, Karlyne and Georgiana for cheering us along. It was a great experience!

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight and a half years ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant."

Jane Austen knew how to write beautiful happy endings!