It was the first Jane Austen novel I read after Northanger Abbey, which was my O Level set text. Part of the Bishop Otter College English course, Persuasion inspired me to read the other four Austen novels over the next couple of years. I revisit them all fairly regularly but it’s a while since I’ve been back to Persuasion which was published in 1817, after the author’s death.

I’m immediately struck now by the precision of its setting. We’re often told that Austen completely ignored the war which raged for most of her life and wrote only about the insularity of country houses. Well Persuasion certainly debunks that. It’s set immediately after “The Peace” (Waterloo, 1815), which is often mentioned, and the novel full of naval officers who have worked together commanding war ships and are now returned home, in some cases with newfound wealth. The war is frequently referred to although it’s obviously true that Austen’s only experience comes through hearing men talk about it – so that’s what she writes about.

Eight years before the novel opens, Anne Elliot, Austen’s most mature heroine, fell for Captain Frederick Wentworth and he with her. She was, to her long lasting regret, “persuaded” by her family that the match was unsuitable because Wentworth had no money or title. Inevitably he shows up, still single, soon after the novel opens.  Thereafter he is a frequent presence in the Elliot social circle including at Lyme where Louisa Musgrove’s accident  becomes pivotal to the plot. Anne’s feelings haven’t changed. The question, in a third person narrative presented from her point of view, is have his? And, just to make matters convenient the war has enabled him to amass a fortune of £25,000. There is embarrassment, awkwardness and a lot of misunderstanding as the plot winds towards its conclusion and Anne, gradually, begins to detect what a 21^st century woman might call “vibes”. It’s the usual Austen big scale sisters, cousins and aunts cast in which the happy ending is an inevitability from chapter 1. It’s a letter rather than a “clinch” which clinches (sorry) it and I love this terse sentence, laden with feelings, subtext and understatement, which follows Anne’s reading of it: “Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from.”

Austen’s characterisation is nine tenths of the reason we still read (and dramatise and discuss) her over 200 years after her death. Anne’s father, Sir Walter Elliot, “a foolish, spendthrift baronet,” is beautifully observed in all his shallow, judgmental, narcissistic awfulness. His other daughters, Mary, married to the long-suffering Charles Musgrove, and Elizabeth, who’s still at home are, in their different ways very much like their father. We presume that Anne’s pleasantness, quiet intelligence and sensitivity comes from her late mother – which explains why Lady Russell (wise, nuanced and willing to admit mistakes), a dear friend of the late Lady Elliot, is so fond of her.

Austen is good at cads too. Who could forget charismatic but amoral Mr Wickham in Pride and Prejudice for example – initially attractive but definitely Bad News. The man up to no good in Persuasion is Mr Elliot, a cousin who stands to inherit Sir Walter’s estate.  He rather desperately doesn’t want the silly old man to remarry and produce a direct heir so he schemes to prevent it –  but, my goodness, he’s a charmer.

People sometimes ask me to name a favourite author or book and, of course, like most voracious readers, I can’t. The truth, especially if it’s a “classic”, is that it’s usually the one I’m reading now. So this week Persuasion is getting my vote.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Sonnets by William Shakespeare

In 1990, a Crime Writers’ Association poll declared Josephine Tey’s 1948 novel one of the hundred best crime novels of all time. It’s hard to disagree – although maybe it’s a silly concept because no one has read every single crime novel ever written. And a tremendous number of fine crime novels have been published since 1990.

Nonetheless The Franchise Affair has long been a favourite of mine. I’ve read it several times so I know more or less where it’s going although, inevitably, one forgets the details between re-reads. The interesting thing, coming back to it now, is that, 75 years after it was first published, it still holds the attention to the end first, because Tey writes so beautifully; second, because her characterisation is intriguing; and third, because she is very good at understated tension.

Two women, an elderly mother and her middle-aged daughter, are accused of kidnapping and beating a teenage girl in their country house. Solicitor, Robert Blair, from whose point of view the story is predominantly presented, takes on their case because he is totally convinced of their innocence. And yet the girl is able to describe the women and their house with total accuracy so how could she be lying? If you haven’t read it before there’s a jolly good plot waiting for you to explore although I don’t find the final page convincing.

Marion Sharpe is gypsy-like in appearance and has unconscious sexual allure so that Robert gradually becomes enamoured. Even Nevil, his rather casual nephew – who “works” in the business – visits the Franchise more often than he need. Mrs Sharpe is entertainingly direct to the point of rudeness, intelligently perceptive and no sufferer of fools. Tey, evidently chose their surname with care.

In 2023 I’m struck too by the almost instant decision by Robert, the local police and Scotland Yard that these women are almost certainly innocent because of their social class. I suspect today the opposite might be true?  But, they’re regarded with suspicion locally because they don’t mix with the community and, of course, once the tabloid press gets hold of the story …

This enjoyable novel made an excellent TV series in 1998 with Patrick Malahide as Robert, a very young Alex Jennings as Nevil and Rosalie Crutchley unforgettable as the redoubtable Mrs Sharpe. Interestingly, it was Crutchley’s second go, so to speak, because she’d played Marion Sharpe in an earlier, 1962, version for TV. It was always a novel which cried out for dramatisation. There was a film, starring Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray, in 1951 when the novel was only three years old.

Some things date in a bad way and some things, although full of 1948 detail, stand the test of time with aplomb. This novel is one of them.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Persuasion by Jane Austen

It’s a hard hitting story about drug addiction, parentless children who get repeatedly rejected and the horrors of fostering in 1990s/early 2000s Appalachia especially for a mixed race boy.  I was riveted, moved and disturbed from page one. I was also completely hooked. It’s a big novel but I read it in four days.

It is based on, and inspired by, David Copperfield but the fascinating thing is that if you knew nothing about Dickens and his famous semi-autobiographical novel you could simply take Demon Copperhead at face value.  And it would work brilliantly.

If you are familiar with David Copperfield, however, it’s an odd sensation because you have foreknowledge of the plot. You know who will hook up with whom, who will be ruined and who will die. And you read with a separate level of curiosity as you wonder how Kingsolver will achieve these outcomes while maintaining contextual plausibility.

She does it, very successfully, by not following her source novel too slavishly. If she needs another character she invents one.  The Peggot family, for instance live next door to Demon and his mother. They are a couple – kind, loving and decent – with an extended family who all play significant parts in the plot. Dickens simply gave us Peggoty, who eventually marries Barkis, along with her kindly brother at Great Yarmouth. Kingsolver has taken the Peggoty concept and developed it. It’s both ingenious and convincing. And Demon’s own narrative voice is richly arresting.

The novel also reinforces the point that Dickens’s character-types are timelessly true to life. We’ve all met versions of U-Haul the embezzler and Fast Forward the young man with the charisma of a god but who values no one except himself. Then there’s fragile Dori, the  first love of Demon’s life, who simply slides ever further into drug addiction and eventually fades away – her faithful dog Jip curled up on her stomach.

Dickens was not, in truth, terribly good at virtuous women. His original Agnes, like Flora Dombey and Rose Maylie, is pallid and not particularly believable. Kingsolver’s Angus is far more interesting. She’s bright, feisty, independent and perceptive. And that makes the ending – in a novel which is ultimately about redemption – arguably better than the Dickens one.

Another glorious thing about Demon Copperhead is the sheer observational exuberance of the writing. Again and again Kingsolver stopped me dead in my tracks with a phrase or  description so apt that it chimed. Consider, for instance: “Two dead wasps lay on the sill with their heads close together like a tiny murder-suicide.” Or “The moon was more egg-shaped than round, but seemed proud of itself regardless, laying out a shiny silver road across the water to our feet”. Or “Mr Peg’s people straggled in like a trail of ants carrying their casserole dishes, their sheet cakes, their green Jello rings with wrinkled Saran Wrap skin”. It’s the sort of thing which brings me out in a major attack of writer’s envy.

I always contend that you invariably learn facts from novels. This one packs in a lot of information about the tobacco industry because much of the action is in Virginia so that is another bonus. There’s a fair bit about American football too.

Demon Copperhead was published last year, a Pulitzer prize winner which has also won the Women’s Prize for Fiction. It is now available in paperback although I read it on Kindle. I recommend it very warmly.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

According to Amazon I have purchased Salley Vickers’ beautiful 2001 novel three times. I really can’t think why unless I gave it as presents to two other people. If I did, then it’s a sign of how much I must have liked it.  I certainly have very fond memories of a warm, tender read so returning to it now promised to be a treat. And it was.

The titular Miss (Julia) Garnet, a retired history teacher, has recently lost her live-in companion of thirty years. No, they were not an “item” but they were close, perhaps like sisters, and Julia is feeling deeply bereaved and lonely. So she decamps to a rented flat in Venice, initially for six months. While there – long story short – she becomes fixated on the paintings by Francesco Guardi of Tobias and the Angel in the church of Angelo Raffaele, reads the Book of Tobit from The Apocrypha, makes friends for the first time in her life and finds, eventually, the sort of inner peace which has always eluded her.

It’s a book which operates on more levels and layers than any lasagne made in a Venetian restaurant. First, there’s an evocation of Venice as detailed and compelling a fine guidebook. If this novek doesn’t make you want to re/visit I don’t know what will. You can see the perfectly carved figures, smell the lagoon, taste the coffee, feel the rough texture of the statuary and hear the birds wheeling over the water.

The novel is also a richly sensitive portrait of a woman who has never known sexual love but, perhaps, even at this late stage in life would like to. Carlo is very attentive and attractive but …

Then there’s the spiritual awakening. Miss Garnet has always been an atheist communist but now, to the exasperation of her “friend” Vera, who visits from Britain, she begins to recognise that there might be more than one way of looking at things – especially angels. The character of, and her conversations with, the urbane, unconventional Monsignore are one of the novel’s many delights.

Julia is inspired to explore the Book of Tobit, a version of which Vickers threads through the narrative. It includes the earliest mention of St Raphael. The themes are echoed in what is happening to Miss Garnet now especially in the characters and backgrounds of Sarah and Toby, two young art restorers working on a chapel who become Julia’s friends and whose back story is complicated.

It’s also a doggy novel. There is a dog in the Guardi which sets Julia thinking and Monsignore’s pug, named Marco, after St Mark, is a character in his own right. Then there are the dogs she sees and hears on the street along with various other dog references. If one were studying this book with students there would be a lot of fun to be had in creating a big flow chart of themes to work out how they interlink.

This is a novel which twists and turns with such gentle elegance that it’s hard to foresee how Vickers could possibly end it. She does it with stylish lyricism –  naturally.

Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver