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Persuasion

Jane Austen

Discussion: 2018 Read Harder Challenge

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What Members Thought

Feb 02, 2017 Melissa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: my-favorite-things, books-i-heard

Five stars for the story - it's my favorite Austen. But only four stars for the narration. Nadia May is fine (she's got some flat vowels and she pauses too long between sentences, which are not unlistenable offenses, but she isn't Ciaran Hinds reading his letter and won't be ever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). ...more

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Aug 06, 2008 Cindy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: romance, audiobook, 19th-century, 2009, book-club, 2018

Persuasion to me has seemed a little bit like the country cousin out of the Austen novels. Pride and Prejudice is the popular one, with all the movie adaptations and the novelizations and the good press. Emma is sort of a runner-up. It also has some good movie versions and a lot of humor and lighthearted fun. Sense and Sensibility is also popular.

But before last year, I knew nothing at all about Persuasion. I wasn't sure what the plot was; I never saw it on the big screen; I couldn't even tell y ...more

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Sep 07, 2011 Jeff Scott rated it really liked it

Shelves: audiobooks, 1001books, classics, to-own

I’ve always been intrigued with the subtle knife of conversation that’s prominent in Austen books. A subtle remark, a right phrasing and your enemy is vanquished, cast off out of good society. It seems to be an analysis on the power of language over those who are more interested in appearance than reality. So goes Persuasion, an Austen work with a little less of the drama and more about the connection of two people. It’s a detail of how family and friends kept their true love apart, a sort of Ro I’ve always been intrigued with the subtle knife of conversation that’s prominent in Austen books. A subtle remark, a right phrasing and your enemy is vanquished, cast off out of good society. It seems to be an analysis on the power of language over those who are more interested in appearance than reality. So goes Persuasion, an Austen work with a little less of the drama and more about the connection of two people. It’s a detail of how family and friends kept their true love apart, a sort of Romeo and Juliet had cooler heads prevailed.

Overall, it’s the same Austen fair, family is fallen on a bit of hard times. A handsome and wealthy man would solve the problem, but beware of the ones with long engagements or those who want to manipulate you for their own ends. Anne is able to easily evade these false attempts even though one of them would have meant a restoration to her home. She knows she was always meant for Wentworth even though those many years ago she was persuaded otherwise. It’s a story that could be told today with families pressuring their impressionable children to marry or not to marry when instead, standing up for what you want is the only thing that will lead to happiness.

Favorite Passages:

"Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the profession, would be, indeed, a throwing away, which she grieved to think of!" p. 21

"Soon, however, she began to reason with herself, and try to be feelingless. Eight years, almost eight years had passed, since all had been given up. How absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an interval had banished into distance and indistinctness! What might not eight years do? Events of every description, changes, alienations,removals--all, all must be comprised in it, and oblivion of the past--how natural, how certain too! It included nearly a third part of her own life.Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing." p. 48

"She had used him ill, deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn afeebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure. She had given him up to oblige others. Ithad been the effect of over-persuasion. It had been weakness and timidity." p. 49

"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." p. 183

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Aug 02, 2012 Donna rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classic-fiction

Persuasion is the fifth Jane Austen novel I've read and while I've like them all, nothing will ever be as great as Pride & Prejudice. This is a fine story about Anne Eliot who was persuaded to give up the man she loved because he has neither fortune nor a title. The novel is set eight years later when Captain Wentworth comes back into her life. It's a romance, so you know how this is going to end.

A word on the text: I started reading this in the Annotated edition listed, but I soon realized that ...more

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Aug 04, 2011 Allie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audience-adults, favorites, letters-correspondence-diaries, own, classics, place-uk, genre-romance, fiction, blankies-book-club

I enjoyed this much more than I've enjoyed anything else Austen has written, and much more than I thought I would. Anne was a really strong and compassionate character, and her family was so ridiculous! I wish everyone got their comeuppance at the end, but that's not exactly Austen's thing. ...more

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Sep 18, 2007 Dora rated it liked it

Shelves: bookgroup, around-the-world

England. I found this much more difficult to read than other Austen works. Something about it felt much more dense and difficult to navigate than the other novels.

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