Will I love Miss Austen?

The greatest romance in Jane Austen’s life was surely the mutual love and support shared with her sister, Cassandra. I read this book in almost one sitting during a bout of COVID-19.

While I cannot attest to the book's official medicinal properties, it made me feel tons better and was surely a great way to spend my time in isolation. I was both transported and moved by this fictional what-if-biography of Cassandra.  

Miss Austen is Cassandra, sister of the more famous Jane, who takes centre stage in this story, though Jane is there, too, as the beloved missed sister, not the novelist. The year is 1840, Jane has been dead for twenty years, Cassandra is in her sixties and though frail is on a quest to find some missing letters which may reveal secrets about Jane and Cassandra which must not be known. It’s a mystery and we want to know if Cassandra will find those letters, but it is also a touching portrait of sisterly devotion. Cassandra makes an admirable heroine,… show more.

Jane Austen seems never to have experienced the kind of sweeping romance the heroines in her novels enjoy, but what if she did have secrets, which have been hidden to us until now? In Miss Austen, Gill Hornby brings to life Cassandra Austen, Jane’s sister, as she seeks to protect her famous sibling’s reputation. Writing Austenian dialogue and letters is no mean feat, but Hornby more than pulls it off in this quiet, but compelling read.

A #1 bestseller. 1840: After Jane Austen’s death, her sister Cassandra must find and destroy any letters which may reveal a darker side of Jane. An emotional novel about the lives and loves of Cassandra and Jane Austen. Miss Austen, like my book, takes a sideways glance at a famous writer (in my case Virginia Woolf) - and ingeniously tries to imagine literary lives, from a fresh perspective. It is so rare in novels to find a convincing central woman character (Cassandra) who is elderly. As a 76-year-old myself, I found Hornby’s depiction of the difficulties (and joys)… show more.