Miss Austen by Gill Hornby ISBN: 9781250252197
Published by Flatiron Books on April 7, 2020
Genres: Historical Fiction
Pages: 304
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A #1 International Bestseller
"A deeply imagined and deeply moving novel. Reading it made me happy and weepy in equally copious amounts.” —Karen Joy Fowler
"You can’t help feeling that Jane would have approved.” —The GuardianFor fans of Jo Baker’s Longbourn, a witty, wonderfully original novel about Cassandra Austen and her famous sister, Jane.
Whoever looked at an elderly lady and saw the young heroine she once was?
England, 1840. Two decades after the death of her beloved sister, Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury and the home of her family friends, the Fowles. In a dusty corner of the vicarage, there is a cache of Jane’s letters that Cassandra is desperate to find. Dodging her hostess and a meddlesome housemaid, Cassandra eventually hunts down the letters and confronts the secrets they hold, secrets not only about Jane but about Cassandra herself. Will Cassandra bare the most private details of her life to the world, or commit her sister’s legacy to the flames?
Moving back and forth between the vicarage and Cassandra’s vibrant memories of her years with Jane, interwoven with Jane’s brilliantly reimagined lost letters, Miss Austen is the untold story of the most important person in Jane’s life. With extraordinary empathy, emotional complexity, and wit, Gill Hornby finally gives Cassandra her due, bringing to life a woman as captivating as any Austen heroine.
This is a slow and thoughtful novel, with steady pacing. It portrays Jane Austen as the witty, wry woman we expect from the tone of her novels- but with a vulnerable side. Make no mistake, though- Cassandra Austen is the focus of the novel (and not just because she’s the narrator).
A sort of amalgam between Elinor Dashwood and Fanny Price, Cassy is endlessly self-sacrificing for her family, especially her sister. Hornby does a great job of giving all the characters a realistic tone and demeanor (Cassy’s selflessness is at times humbling and inspiring, and at times maddeningly martyr-ish both to us the modern audience and to her sister Jane and friend Eliza). And there are shades of Austen characters in the secondary and tertiary characters, which adds a level of fun if you’re familiar with Austen’s novels.
In all, a well-written (if quite slow) novel with reflective and thoughtful themes that I enjoyed but definitely needed to be in a specific mood for.
Read for the Wide World of HistFic Reading Challenge.
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