Date: 23 November 2014
Location: John & Marion
As a whole, the Bookers admired Jane Austen’s Persuasion and several thoroughly enjoyed a re-reading. We praised the spot-on thumbnail character descriptions (or shall we say character “dissections”) as well as the satire directed toward the vanity, selfishness, snobbishness, and lack of self-knowledge of the characters.
It was pointed out that parents, in general, in Persuasion (as well as in other JA novels) were not admirable characters and that the ideal (man, marriage, parent, friend) was of the naval variety. John pointed out that while Austen novels are usually filled with wonderful conversation/dialogue, Persuasion was strangely lacking in this regard.
Bonnie shared pictures of the Lyme Regis harbor and talked about the wealth of marine fossils found in the area which was the subject of another interesting novel, Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. She also mentioned the huge number of JA spin offs, sequels, and adaptations that have been published in the last few years. For a die-hard JA fan, she recommended Susan Kaye’s two-volume re-telling of the novel Persuasion from Captain Wentworth’s point-of-view. The titles are as follows: Frederick Wentworth, Captain: None but You; and Frederick Wentworth, Captain: For You Alone.
— Bonnie