Persuasion

1818, 1989 Bantam Classic edition
Jane Austen
Persuasion
Original price $2.95, possibly bought new
Tattered paperback
B

I guess this would have to be my second-least favorite of Austen's major works.  Unlike in Mansfield Park, I don't have an issue with the romance or with the heroine.  I'm not crazy about Wentworth but he's okay.  I don't have doubts, as some readers do, about Lady Russell or Admiral Croft.

The main gripes I have with the book involve Mr. Elliot.  I don't buy his rudeness as a young man, or his transformation years later.  I don't believe his courtship of Anne or his elopement with Mrs. Clay.  On top of that, compared to Wickham and Willoughby, he's boring.  In fact, I'm afraid that there are no supporting characters that stand out in this book.  Everyone's just sort of there.  (Vain Sir Walter comes closest to making an impact.)

On the plus side, Anne is an interesting heroine.  Older than most of the Austen protagonists, she's an old maid at twenty-seven.  Yet she isn't bitter, even when her ex-fiance shows up and starts flirting with a pair of sisters.  (He's not unscrupulous like Crawford, and he backs off when he realises the consequences.)  Anne is melancholy sometimes, but she remains kind, generous, wise, and brave.  If Catherine Morland was not "born to be an heroine," Anne definitely was.

The 1995 film is interesting in that it definitely isn't glamourous (though not bleak like Rozema's Mansfield Park).  It has a realism and autumnal quality that suit the novel.  I think I saw the 2007 version, but I have absolutely no memory of it.