Persuasion

Today I am grateful for Jane Austen. The timelessness of her characters and her stories astounds me. How do you think she would have reacted if you told her that people would be swooning over her characters and writing fan fiction and re-tellings of her stories 200 years after she had written them?

I just finished reading a post-apocalyptic YA version of Persuasion called For the Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund.

  

This book is REALLY good. It's one of my favorites of the books I've read this year (and I've read A LOT). I find the fact that it's been one of my favorites quite fascinating. I mean, it's based on Persuasion, so it's not like there are any big surprises or anything. I knew from the beginning how it was going to end and what some of the basic plot points would be. I knew that [SPOILER ALERT] the Captain Wentworth character would write the Anne Elliot character a magically romantic letter when he finally expressed his feelings for her. I think its appeal (and the appeal of other Jane Austen re-tellings) is in finding out how faithfully the author sticks to the original, how she gets us from one plot point to the next, how she modernizes the story, and, most of all, the anticipation of capturing the magic all over again.

Let's go back to that magic, specifically, the magically romantic letter from Persuasion. Is there a more perfect love letter in all of literature? Please tell me if there is. Here's the letter (because why wouldn't you want to read it):

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W."

Now that we've established that Captain Frederick Wentworth is the wordsmith all men should aspire to be, let's talk about my favorite iteration of him in film. Ciarin Hinds as Captain Wentworth in the probably-most-famous 1995 version was fine, but, at least for me, he did not fully embody the man I fell so in love with in the book. Rather, that distinction goes to Rupert Penry-Jones of the 2007 BBC version:

Where has the UK been hiding him all these years?? He is a British TV star, most famous for his role as Adam Carter on the series MI-5, which is called Spooks in the UK. All fans of Jane Austen and Persuasion should watch this movie. It's a little artsy, but it is excellent.

Disclaimer: Captain Wentworth is my second-favorite Jane Austen hero, so the opinions expressed herein may be a little biased. In case you're wondering who my favorite Jane Austen hero is, I will tell you that that particular distinction belongs to Mr. Knightley.

Hel-lo, Jonny Lee Miller.

Quote of the Day: "The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." --Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

Austin Teen Book Festival & Ally Condie

Yesterday I attended the Austin Teen Book Festival, which is an AMAZING festival that is put on by Book People (an independent bookstore in Austin) and the Austin Public Library Friends Foundation. They bring in tons of young adult authors--meaning they write books for teens--who are organized into panels by genre, and the authors talk about everything ranging from their books to their writing processes to the challenges of today's teens. I have loved YA fiction ever since I read Twilight took a class on YA literature at BYU, so obviously this festival was kind of a big deal for me. I went to the panels on the fantasy, romance, sci-fi, and thriller genres. 

I really liked something that Ally Condie said. She wrote the books Matched and Crossed and was on the romance panel. She is also LDS (Mormon). Before I get to what she said, I need to give some background. For those of you who may not be familiar with the romance genre, I should tell you that a common trope in this genre is the bad boy (shocking, right?). Usually the bad boy secretly has a heart of gold (though he may not know it yet), but he has had hardships in life that cause him to go down the wrong path. The heroine then helps the bad boy see the error of his ways, he turns good (or at least better), and they live happily ever after. In other genres as well as romance, a deeply flawed character can actually make for a really compelling read—at least in my opinion. (I mean, have you ever heard of Severus Snape?)

Anyway, back on the panel there was another author who had been talking throughout the session about the bad boy love interests in her books and what she likes about them being bad boys. When Ally Condie was asked about her books, she said something I really liked. She said that she has always really wanted to write about good people, which is why her three main characters—Cassia, Xander, and Ky—are all good people. She thinks it’s a misconception that good people in literature cannot be interesting. Good people aren’t just automatically good; they have to decide over and over again that they want to be good, that they want to do the right thing. Good people aren’t perfect, and they often make mistakes, but they also often do really hard things in their pursuit of goodness. All these things make for the possibility that good people be just as compelling to read about as not-good people. While her books aren’t my favorite (though I certainly like them), I admire her for trying to show people that characters who are good are interesting and that we can be as fascinated by them as we are by deeply flawed characters.

Here’s an unrelated extra tidbit for Ally Condie fans: She said that though the whole trilogy belongs to Cassia, Crossed also belongs to Ky and Reached will also belong to Xander. Does this mean that Cassia and Xander will end up together in Reached? One can only hope. Actually, I’m only sort of on Team Xander, so I wouldn’t mind terribly if she ended up with Ky, but wouldn’t it be kind of weird to have half the narration be by Xander and then to have him not be chosen?

 Quote of the Day: “I can do hard things.”—Elaine S. Dalton