BOOK: Persuasion (audio)

Persuasion
by Jane Austen

Here is another book I should have read long ago, but never got around to it.  I have seen a couple of excellent film versions of it, and it has long been one of my favorite Austen stories (though Pride & Prejudice will always top the list).  Here is another story of deep and enduring love overcoming obstacles, including time.  It doesn't have the wit of Pride & Prejudice, making it much more serious in tone, but it's no less romantic and sigh-inducing.  (If you don't believe me, just read Captain Wentworth's letter to Ann, below.)  Sigh.  See?  You just can't help it. 

I listened to the audio recording of this one as well.... the reader was fine, but when compared to the excellent Joanna David (Jane Eyre) she was merely mediocre. 

Spoiler:

"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. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in

F. W.

"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."

from Persuasion by Jane Austen, vol II, chapter XI