What I said then:
[One of] the last two unread books from my much-loved Folio Society boxset.
What I say now:
(Please note, that is NOT the cover on the edition I've got. I couldn't find an image of my version online, and this one was just too silly not to use.)
Persuasion was Jane Austen's final novel, and was written as her health went into its final, terminal decline. Lacking the energy to properly revise and edit her work, Austen left us a novel that is somewhat lacking in her usual masterful control (in terms of both plot and prose). In her finest works (massive Pride and Prejudice fan here), Austen's prose has that knack of being concise, witty, and true. But there are --- shock horror! --- inelegant sentences in Persuasion. There are plenty of elegant ones as well, but it was a bit of a shock to find myself having to read a sentence twice or thrice in order to grasp its meaning. That just doesn't happen with Austen, who ordinarily writes with perfect clarity.
In short: several years before the novel begins, Anne, the plain and oft-ignored (but supremely sensible and virtuous) third Elliot sister, was persuaded by her snobbish father to break off an engagement with Mr Wentworth, an impoverished naval officer. Since then the Elliot's fortunes have been frittered away, while Anne's sometime lover is about to return from the recently concluded wars a successful (and wealthy) man. Can their love survive her rejection of him, and the intervening years? Will she fall for her (way too obviously 'charming') cousin, William? There's also a plethora of subplots involving the romantic entanglements of Anne's silly, shallow cousins and sisters, and the machinations of their on/off flirtations with various gentlemen.
Though the scene in which Anne and Wentworth finally reconcile is quite wonderful and moving, and is the equal of anything in Austen's oeuvre, we've never really learned why we should hope for their reconciliation in the first place. Their love was formed and dashed before the novel ever begins, and we're never given much of an account of it. Then, for the vast majority of the book they act towards each other with cold formality, each wishing to bury the pain of the past. Austen relates this cold formality with considerable skill, but neglects to ever really delve into its inherent falseness, or to give us a glimpse of either characters' continuing love for the other. When the damn bursts, it feels less like a satisfying resolution to an ongoing story, than it feels like a bewildering bolt from the blue.
Several of the other, more minor subplots are resolved in similarly haphazard fashion. One of Anne's cousins, in the space of a couple of weeks in which we don't see her, falls out of love with one man and becomes engaged to another. This second suitor, given every single thing we've learnt about either character, should never have come to her notice at all (he's bookish and shy, she's wild and wilful). It's all a bit convenient.
Some of the subplots lead nowhere (and get resolved ridiculously easily), and there are dramatic events that are undeniably silly, and characters' interior lives seem to change in the blink of an eye to suit whatever purpose Austen requires. It's all a bit of a confused muddle. Don't get me wrong, there's still genius at play here, but it's only occasional, and you've got to look a little harder for it.
Cheers, JC.
currently reading: The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse
books to go: 72
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