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Book Review of Persuasion

Persuasion
Persuasion
Author: Jane Austen
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Book Type: Hardcover
smith-jones avatar reviewed on + 47 more book reviews


After reading two other novels by Jane Austen, this is my only favorite so far. I didn't care much for Elizabeth Bennett, Mr. Darcy was o.k., Emma entertained me but not enough to make me love the story but I did love Anne Elliot as the highly principled, smart, kind, and soft spoken moderate woman I will always admire.

This is my 3rd Jane Austen read and the 3rd. was the winner, she won me with this story. This is the most romantic book I've read recently and I'm glad I persevered in my search of the the perfect Austen novel for me. Captain Wentworth's love declaration to Miss Anne Elliot will forever be regarded as a masterpiece of love perpetuated in words:

"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."

This book showed more emotion than any other of Jane Austen's work. For once, I didn't mind all the walking and sighing and reciting lines of romantic poetry to oneself. It was charmingly comic, romantic and full of hidden, repressed desire for the one the protagonist refused.

Well done. Watch the movies, they were great.