Persuasion

Eight years earlier, Anne Elliot was persuaded to give up Frederick Wentworth, a naval officer then promising but penniless, on the counsel of her prudent godmother Lady Russell. Now Wentworth returns, wealthy and free, into the shrinking world of her family, and word reaches her that he found her so altered he should scarcely have known her. What follows is a study in what goes unspoken: a clinging toddler lifted wordlessly from her neck, a seat quietly arranged in a passing carriage, an autumn hazelnut held up as an emblem of firmness. Small gestures carry the whole weight of feeling.

Around Anne moves a company drawn with dry precision. There is the proud Elizabeth, who lavishes favor on her unworthy companion Mrs. Clay. There is the self-dramatizing Mary and her easygoing Charles, and the hearty Admiral Croft, tenant of the house the Elliots can no longer afford. Austen watches them all with an irony that never turns cruel, and the prose keeps its composure even as its heroine's does not.

"She had been forced into prudence in her youth," the novel observes, "she learned romance as she grew older." It knows how a constant heart keeps its own counsel and waits, and how much can pass between two people who say almost nothing at all.