Persuasion - Jane Austen

Written by Jane Austen
Read by Juliet Stevenson
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
Publisher: Naxos AudioBooks Ltd., 2007

The last novel completed by Jane Austen before her death, Persuasion is often thought to reflect on the author’s own lost love.

Sir Walter Elliot has raised his three daughters with his own sense of haughty pride. Elizabeth, at twenty-eight, has found no one good enough to marry, while Mary has, with some condescension, married the son of the local squire. The youngest, Anne, was persuaded to throw off her fiancé eight years ago due to his lowly station in life.

When Captain Frederick Wentworth returns from the Napoleonic Wars a man of wealth and rank, Anne must confront her remorse and her unrequited love for him as he courts another woman. This is a story of second chances, humility, and the perseverance of love.

Starred review from May 28, 2007
Stevenson has read all of Austen’s novels for audiobook, in abridged or unabridged versions, and her experience shows in this delightful production. Though dominated by the intelligent, sweet voice of Anne Elliot—the least favored but most worthy of three daughters in a family with an old name but declining fortunes—Stevenson provides other characters with memorable voices as well. She reads Anne’s haughty father’s lines with a mixture of stuffiness and bluster, and Anne’s sisters are portrayed with a hilariously flighty, breathy register that makes Austen’s contempt for them palpable. Anne’s voice is mostly measured and reasonable—an expression of her strong mind and spirit—but Stevenson imbues her speech with wonderful shades of passion as Anne is reacquainted with Capt. Wentworth, whom she has continued to love despite being forced, years before, to reject him over status issues. Listening to Stevenson, as Anne, describe a sudden encounter with Wentworth, one hardly needs Austen’s description of how Anne grows faint—Stevenson’s perfectly judged and deeply felt reading has already shown that she must have. Even those who have read Austen’s novels will find themselves loving this book all over again with Stevenson’s evocative rendition ringing richly in their ears.