Gill Hornby's Miss Austen gives us the story of Jane Austen's life from her sister Cassandra's point of view. The premise is that Cassandra (Cassy here. Was Cassandra Austen ever referred to in this way? I can't remember ever coming across that before.) goes to stay with the family of her own dead fiancé in search of letters from Jane that might be too revealing. (It's a complicated premise, and the family tree is hard to keep track of, despite a guide at the beginning of the book.) We know that Cassandra was extremely protective of her sister's legacy and destroyed many of Jane's letters just before her own death in 1843. Hornby's novel imagines those letters and how Cassandra went about collecting them. Alternating between 1840, when Cassandra is scouting out letters to keep from the public, and earlier years when Jane was still alive, the novel imagines the conversations and letters that are (as far as we know) lost to history.
This is an intriguing premise, and who doesn't want to speculate about what Austen *really* wrote in candid moments? Unfortunately, though, Hornby has done what I would have thought impossible: She's made Jane Austen seem unappealing as a person. The Jane Austen of Hornby's novel comes across as moody, self-absorbed, and difficult to satisfy.
Likewise, I have seen other reviews that suggest that this novel is very sympathetic to spinsters. I'm not sure that I see that. Hornby presents both Cassandra and Jane Austen as a little perverse in their rejection of proposals. They wind up happy enough, but Hornby's version of the proposals sets them up as though they are consciously deciding to perpetuate their desperate financial situation.
Of course, it's likely true that Jane Austen had bad moods and may have been "in low spirits" for long periods of time, but I'm not convinced by Hornby's imagining of these moments and what might have been in the letters.
I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
