Thursday, January 24, 2013

Persuasion - Jane Austen

Title: Persuasion
Author: Jane Austen
Pages: 250
Published: 2003 (originally 1818)
Genre: Classics

Challenges: The Classics Bookclub
Edition: Paperback
Source: Personal

Description: At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen’s last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities. (via Goodreads)

Thoughts: This is a re-read for me and I think I enjoyed it a little better than I did the first time around, but my thoughts about this re-read are very similar to that of my first reading of the book.  Sure Austen writes as deeply as she does in her earlier books, I think that she either rushed the ending of the book due to illness or maybe somebody she knew wrote the final chapter, because it seemed as though she was wanting write more about evolution of the relationship between Anne and Wentworth, as the book just kinda ends and leaves the reader hanging.  There doesn't really seem to be any sort of resolution, as there are in a number of her books and the final chapter is relatively short compared to the previous 3 chapters in the book, which are quite lengthy and detailed.  Also Austen's other works that were published prior to her death are all about 300+ pages long, with Northanger and Persuasion being some of her shortest works.

Bottom line:  I would recommend this book to those that are Austen fans, not those that are starting to read her books.  The book is very detailed and the lightness that is in her first three novels (Emma, P&P and S&S) just isn't there, but you can see the maturity of Austen as a writer and she is equally as effective.

Rating: 3.8/5

Pages for 2013: 1568

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