From the Bookshelf of The Reading Challenge Group…

Persuasion

Jane Austen

Start date: January 1, 2015

Finish date: January 31, 2015

Discussion: Group Read Archive 2014-16

Why we're reading this: Classic Group Read - January 2015
[close] Classic Group Read - January 2015

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Group Read Archive 2014-16

Genre Group Read (Humour) - December 2016 - You Are Not So Smart
By Allison , Quest Hound · 11 posts · 30 views

last updated Dec 28, 2016 04:05PM

Alternate Group Read (Classics) - December 2016 - Mansfield Park
By Allison , Quest Hound · 5 posts · 18 views

last updated Dec 04, 2016 09:34AM

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What Members Thought

Apr 06, 2011 Wendy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, blooms-western-canon, 1001-books, audiobooks

I'm not usually the type that greatly enjoys gentle romances. I need something more than the requisite *nice* heroine and *handsome* hero talking in circles around one another to be interested and care, so these kinds of things typically bore me to sleep. My first foray into Austen was Pride and Prejudice as a sort of "escape" read in college. Like watching/reading a Shakespeare play, perhaps it took me a while to settle into the formal language and manners of upper-class regency England. Some o I'm not usually the type that greatly enjoys gentle romances. I need something more than the requisite *nice* heroine and *handsome* hero talking in circles around one another to be interested and care, so these kinds of things typically bore me to sleep. My first foray into Austen was Pride and Prejudice as a sort of "escape" read in college. Like watching/reading a Shakespeare play, perhaps it took me a while to settle into the formal language and manners of upper-class regency England. Some of the plot twists took me by surprise with their (relative to the time-period) audacity--I mean, if the 16 year old sister runs of with the rogue, there's a boatload of scandalous behavior implied there! Someone fetch my smelling salts! I enjoyed the comic asides, especially the banter between Mr. & Mrs. Bennett, but I never really found myself swept up in the Elizabeth-Darcy...thing.

I experienced something similar in Persuasion, but on the whole I enjoyed the story more than P&P. First, I listened to this as an audiobook narrated by Juliet Stevenson. Her lovely voice pulled me straight into the story, and somehow listening to the formal Regency language came more naturally than reading it. What I like most about Jane Austen's own narrative voice (and what Ms. Stevenson beautifully captures) is how deceptively clever and funny she is. I suspect many a reader has missed her humor because she writes it, as it were, with a straight face so that the dead-pan is easily confused with sincerity. An example is when our heroine Anne strikes up a conversation with a young sailor who recently lost his fiance to illness. Although the young man seems to become interested in her, Anne subtly maintains intellectual and emotional superiority throughout the exchange, politely mocking the poor guy's love of "emo" poetry and suggesting books for him to read, all the while displaying only the utmost kindness. Though they both hinge on communication failures, Anne's own love story with old friend/flame Captain Wentworth struck me as more mature and potentially tragic than Elizabeth Bennett's--Anne is the ripe old age of 29, staring spinsterhood in the face. The fact that it's likely based on Jane Austen's own (failed) romance, makes it all the more poignant and bittersweet. ...more

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Apr 05, 2013 Gizelle rated it it was amazing

"Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F.W." *swoons*

And here I was capitulating Pride and Prejudice as the best romance book of its genre. From now on, I'm putting Persuasion on the pedestal, followed by P&P, with Northanger Abbey in third place.

P.S: It's true, what they say. I also agree that Jane A. left most of herself in this book. Love endures and is sometimes found again, but in many cases it is often thought lost forever. ...more

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