Christian's review
Persuasion
by Jane Austen
Christian's review
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Christian's review
rating:
Riding a recent Brit Lit kick, and recalling fond memories of Pride and Prejudice in college, I picked up Persuasion at a used book shop in a convenient size for subway reading.
Perhaps the atmosphere affected me--dim lighting on stuffy summer DC metro platforms--perhaps it was the biography of Abraham Lincoln I was reading in the evenings had me meditating upon a certain greatness of character that seemed absent amidst the Elliots and company, but I was largely unimpressed by Persuasion.
Yes, "unimpressed" is the right word. Simply as a matter of craft, the book felt clunky. The revelation about Mr. Elliot's true diabolical nature, for example, drops from nowhere: the scattered (though coincidentally saved) letter of a friend whose connection is the very prior moment's discovery and who herself is a very late addition to the cast. Or take Lady Russell: we are given to understand is a towering personality; but the only reason we have for knowing this is the narrator's...more
Perhaps the atmosphere affected me--dim lighting on stuffy summer DC metro platforms--perhaps it was the biography of Abraham Lincoln I was reading in the evenings had me meditating upon a certain greatness of character that seemed absent amidst the Elliots and company, but I was largely unimpressed by Persuasion.
Yes, "unimpressed" is the right word. Simply as a matter of craft, the book felt clunky. The revelation about Mr. Elliot's true diabolical nature, for example, drops from nowhere: the scattered (though coincidentally saved) letter of a friend whose connection is the very prior moment's discovery and who herself is a very late addition to the cast. Or take Lady Russell: we are given to understand is a towering personality; but the only reason we have for knowing this is the narrator's...more
