Miss Austen: A Novel
By: Gill Hornby / Narrated By: Juliet Stevenson
Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
Aaaaahhhh! Music to my ears! Such a lot of wit; such a lot of heart!
AND it’s narrated by Juliet Stevenson!!!
Okay, I’ve done six reviews today, and I’ve FINally come to the review I’ve been dying to do as this, Miss Austen by Gill Hornby was my favorite Listen of the week, and kinda sorta looking like a favorite all around. Think ye not for a second that I won’t be listening to this gem of an audiobook again and again in the future.
And again!
Cassandra Austen, Jane Austen’s beloved sister, traipses to Kintbury to the family home of her lost love, Tom Fowle, who died of yellow fever before they had a chance to wed. It’s 1840, and tho’ she’s told Isabella that she’s come to help her move (The place has been lived in by family for 99 years, but now they have but 2 months to completely vacate), she’s actually there to see to Jane’s legacy by finding and possibly destroying a cache of letters. Through the story, we see Cassandra as I oh so much have been picturing her, especially after listening to Lucy Worsley’s bio Jane Austen at Home—A hyper intelligent, bold and sassy, cunning woman chockfull of love and free with her affections (There are a LOT of children around the place, and through the book, Cassandra oft says how she’s thrilled that she can love her siblings’ offspring and then go the heck home).
EVERYthing that was in the bio? Totally here.
And I cannot applaud Hornsby enough for the way she weaved soooo much fact into such glorious fiction. Her writing very much reads like an Austen novel, but here we also get Jane in the flesh, all her foibles, all her love, all her scrapes. The whole “Harris Bigg-Wither” engagement has always struck me as just a trifle sad; the poor young man was painfully shy, stammered like crazy, seemed so discouraged by her breaking it off. Yeh yeh yeh, they were only engaged for, what? 24 hours? Still, I kinda felt bad for the guy. But here in the book, it comes out as fairly funny, even if it IS tinged with the sad (Jane is worried about being a spinster and becoming a burden on her family; Cassandra has some money Tom left her in his Will, but Jane? Society had no use for unmarried women of a certain age… boooooo…!). That Cassandra ends Bigg-Wither’s story by saying he QUICKLY got over Jane and went on to marry and have an eNORmous amount of children—and who wants that?!?—rather sealed his fate on a happy note for me.
All rumors concerning Jane Austen are carefully sprinkled throughout the story, embellished enticingly (Seaside romance, anyone?), what fun.
But the BEST parts are of Cassandra looking back on her life with Jane, with how very close they were and how they helped each other through such difficult times of change. That she helped a Jane who’d almost given up on writing.
That she stroked Jane’s head as Jane died.
>Sniffle<
There’s plenty of wit that shines, and the writing is lovely. And there are plenty of scrapes that a rather cunning Cassandra gets herself into. There’s even a little bit of romance thrown in (No, not Cassandra—I loved how for her Tom was It) to tickle and delight at the end. AND there’s Juliet Stevenson who HAS to be the best voice for Austen ever—well, at least for Persuasion as she IS Anne Elliot to me. In this audiobook, Stevenson manages multiple characters, many many accents, so many situations and good golly gosh! Can the woman deliver the emotional punch, or what?!?
DEFinitely a keeper, and so very much my pick of the week.
Come for Jane Austen, enjoy it for Juliet Stevenson, love it for Hornsby’s specTACular delivery of devoted sisters…
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