Persuasion - Jane Austen > Reviews

Advantages: Best love story in fiction
Disadvantages: None

...new. And of them all, Persuasion is the one I love most. It's not easy to say why. The novel lacks the champagne sparkle of Pride and Prejudice, the maturity and structure of Emma, the exuberant fun of Northanger Abbey. It certainly does not have the intriguing dark elements you find in Mansfield Park. So what is it ? In the first place, the characters get around a bit, which is unusual in an Austen novel. There are nice vignettes of Bath and ... Read review

Advantages: Another Austen masterpiece
Disadvantages: None

“Persuasion”, one of six completed novels by Jane Austen, though written in 1815-16, was not published until 1818, a year after its author’s death at the age of forty-one. The story centres on the Elliot family: Sir Walter and his three daughters. Sir Walter, a widower, is a vain, snobbish individual whose main – indeed, only – reading matter is the entry concerning himself in the Baronetage. His haughty, unmarried ... Read review

Advantages: interesting characters, good sub-plots
Disadvantages:

The BBC did an adaptation of this book a few years ago starring Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds which is really good if you ever get the chance to watch it. The central character Anne Elliot at first appears to be a weak one, always bowing to other's opinions on what to do and how to act. Although her family is at face value a wealthy one her father and sister have managed to fritter away most of the fortune since her mother's death years previously. ... Read review

Advantages: Unputdownable
Disadvantages: Too short!!

I discovered this book one bleak afternoon in the school library during my A' Level year. A new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice by the BBC had increased my interest in Jane Austen and pushed me to read all of her work, including her unfinished novels. Pride and Prejudice seems to have gained all the glory due to the numerous adaptation and seems to have eclipsed the slower paced and gentler novel that is Persuasion. Persuasion is by far and away ... Read review

Advantages: Character developement on the level of Anne is compelling
Disadvantages: Character and story developement elsewhere is lacking

Persuasion is indeed a fantastic book, but as one of her later novels it lacks the emotions and detail to the story that earlier novels such as Pride and Prejudice have had. Anne, the stories heroine is developed thoroughly throughout the novel and the other charaters are seen as important depending on their situation and effect on Anne. Anne is, as Jane Austen herself perfect "A heroine too perfect even for me." Unlike in other novels Anne does not ... Read review