Miss Austen: A Novel of the Austen Sisters

Author: Hornby, Gill

Brand: Flatiron Books

Edition: book

Binding: Hardcover

Format: Big Book

Number Of Pages: 288

Release Date: 07-04-2020

Details: About the Author Gill Hornby is the author of the novels The Hive and All Together Now, as well as The Story of Jane Austen, a biography of Austen for young readers. She lives in Kintbury, England, with her husband and their four children. Product Description A #1 International Bestseller "A deeply imagined and deeply moving novel. Reading it made me happy and weepy in equally copious amounts.” ―Karen Joy Fowler "You can’t help feeling that Jane would have approved.” ―The Guardian For fans of Jo Baker’s Longbourn, a witty, wonderfully original novel about Cassandra Austen and her famous sister, Jane. Whoever looked at an elderly lady and saw the young heroine she once was? England, 1840. Two decades after the death of her beloved sister, Jane, Cassandra Austen returns to the village of Kintbury and the home of her family friends, the Fowles. In a dusty corner of the vicarage, there is a cache of Jane’s letters that Cassandra is desperate to find. Dodging her hostess and a meddlesome housemaid, Cassandra eventually hunts down the letters and confronts the secrets they hold, secrets not only about Jane but about Cassandra herself. Will Cassandra bare the most private details of her life to the world, or commit her sister’s legacy to the flames? Moving back and forth between the vicarage and Cassandra’s vibrant memories of her years with Jane, interwoven with Jane’s brilliantly reimagined lost letters, Miss Austen is the untold story of the most important person in Jane’s life. With extraordinary empathy, emotional complexity, and wit, Gill Hornby finally gives Cassandra her due, bringing to life a woman as captivating as any Austen heroine. Review Praise for Miss Austen “The great joy of Miss Austen is that the reader feels immersed in a world that is convincingly Jane’s from the first page…It’s also extremely funny…Miss Austen is a novel of great kindness, often unexpectedly moving, with much to say about the status of ‘invisible’ older women. Above all, it’s concerned with the triumph of small acts of goodness; you can’t help feeling that Jane would have approved.” ―The Guardian “A persuasive portrait of that bane of scholars and biographers…Hornby depicts a romance that could have emerged from an Austen novel and a number of real-life characters whose traits Austen may have borrowed for her fiction.” ―The New York Times Book Review “A delightfully astute reimagining…The Jane revealed by the letters, and by Cassandra’s own memories, is as witty and mischievous as we’d expect. But she’s also self-absorbed and petulant…Heresy? Not at all. It’s a persuasive picture of a brilliant woman who’s often derailed by her domestic duties but driven to write regardless.” ―Wall Street Journal “Sure to enthrall Janeites…Like Austen’s cunning social satires, Hornby’s novel works on multiple levels…Miss Austen celebrates not just Virginia Woolf’s room of one’s own, but a home of one’s own―and the joys of female companionship…Continues to twist and turn deliciously.” ―Christian Science Monitor “Engaging…Lovely… Hornby whips fact, romance and a little Gothic mystery into an imaginative compote that’s bound to satisfy those who hunger for more servings of Austen, and those who just enjoy a good tale. She channels Austen’s wry take on women in society, with a dash of ageism to boot.” ―Minneapolis Star Tribune “Without romanticizing its period setting or underplaying the precariousness of any woman’s position in this society, [Miss Austen] celebrates unexamined lives, sisterhood and virtues such as kindness and loyalty.” ―Sunday Times (UK) “A beguilingly persuasive book that no Austen fan will want to miss.” ―Readers Digest “Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra takes centre stage in this engrossing novel that portrays what 19th Century life was like for an unmarried woman of limited means.” ―Good Housekeeping “A warm and fascinating story…Gill Hornby has written Miss Austen with compassion, wisdom, an observant eye, and a great deal o

EAN: 9781250252203

Package Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches

Languages: English