1840s England. Cassandra Austen, professional spinster and sister-of, arrives at the home of a relative who has just lost her father, and because said father was a parson, she is forced to vacate the house in which she’s been living to make room for the new guy. The relative, Eliza, is not thrilled to see Cassandra, but Cassandra doesn’t care: her sole mission is to find the letters that her sister Jane once sent, to protect her reputation and keep her secrets.
**Spoilers herein**
Spoiler alert: there are no secrets. Cassandra babbles about them a lot but there is literally nothing in the letters that could be considered even mildly scandalous. It’s a cheap and badly executed narrative device to keep the reader interested because God knows, there is very little in this novel that does that.
Hornby’s mission to write about the lives of the Austen women is a noble one, but she’s entirely the wrong author for it. Someone with a sly, sardonic sort of wit could’ve pulled it off; Kate Atkinson would probably turn this into an entirely different beast. But Hornby lacks Austen’s dazzling wit, and Austen – as portrayed in flashbacks – comes across as increasingly erratic. And that, too, could have worked, but it’s handled a little tactlessly.
Austen wrote about the struggles facing women in her day, and Hornby tries to emulate that here, but ironically ends up offering the same solution – try finding a nice bloke instead – that the men in Austen’s day did. Never mind Cassandra’s constant musings about the sisterhood, about women sticking together; it’s a fantasy. Bros before hoes, dicks before dames.
Aside from that, the novel’s just… Dull. The side characters are paper thin and often silly, and written seemingly without any affection. Cassandra is a goose and Jane herself never really takes off either. The way their quest to find a partner and get married is put on the page is hardly something Austen would approve of; too superficial, too serious. Austen’s famed wit and spark are lacking.
And this is coming from someone who doesn’t even like Austen, so go figure.