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A review by candacesiegle_greedyreader
Miss Austen by Gill Hornby
5.0
Why do we know so little about Jane Austen? We know she was a prodigious writer of letters, but we also know that her older sister, Cassandra, destroyed them. "Miss Austen" imagines why that might be.
The first part of the novel is charming, with a jolt of great sadness when Cassandra's fiance dies in the West Indies, leaving her future uncertain. More than perhaps any other I've read, this novel brings home the frightening situations of unmarried woman who cannot work and have no money of their own. Jane never wanted to marry but Cassie's marriage would have secured her own future--a home to live in.
The story toggles between 1840 and late in the last century. Cassie shows up at the home of her friend Eliza. Eliza is long dead, but her daughter is about to lose the house that has been in the family for generations. With no vicar in the family to take the living over, it will go to a stranger. Cassie wants to find the letters Jane wrote to Eliza and other friends, to keep them from being discovered and published, revealing how different the real Jane was from the adored author she now is.
"Miss Austen" is a wonderful imagining of what the lives of Jane, Cassie, and their other friends who didn't marry were like as they grew older. It's filled with love and sisterhood, but the friends can only hope that a male family member will provide them with enough money to live.
Throughout the book we see women marrying men who are stupid, thoughtless, or cruel because the alternative is even worse--traveling from relative to relative hoping to be "of use."
Thank you to Edelweiss and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review. Janeites will love this book.
The first part of the novel is charming, with a jolt of great sadness when Cassandra's fiance dies in the West Indies, leaving her future uncertain. More than perhaps any other I've read, this novel brings home the frightening situations of unmarried woman who cannot work and have no money of their own. Jane never wanted to marry but Cassie's marriage would have secured her own future--a home to live in.
The story toggles between 1840 and late in the last century. Cassie shows up at the home of her friend Eliza. Eliza is long dead, but her daughter is about to lose the house that has been in the family for generations. With no vicar in the family to take the living over, it will go to a stranger. Cassie wants to find the letters Jane wrote to Eliza and other friends, to keep them from being discovered and published, revealing how different the real Jane was from the adored author she now is.
"Miss Austen" is a wonderful imagining of what the lives of Jane, Cassie, and their other friends who didn't marry were like as they grew older. It's filled with love and sisterhood, but the friends can only hope that a male family member will provide them with enough money to live.
Throughout the book we see women marrying men who are stupid, thoughtless, or cruel because the alternative is even worse--traveling from relative to relative hoping to be "of use."
Thank you to Edelweiss and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review. Janeites will love this book.