I LOVED this book!
My paperback copy, published by Sourcebooks in Naperville (Illinois), asserts that this is a Young Adult book. But, as a friend said to me, it's really a romance for adults, although it is not a modern romance: no sex and no double-entendres.
I see Austen's influence here in so many ways. Above all, the central theme is courage. In this regard, it is very much like Persuasion. Valancy Stirling, the heroine of the novel, is a little sad: she quite repressed by her mother's insistence on perfect obedience and her limited life choices.
As the novel opens, she is having her 29th birthday; her uncle teases her relentlessly about her old maid status, which really wears on her.
She suddenly receives shocking news which galvanizes her; she resolves to please herself, and while her family is so shocked by her behavior that they investigate whether they can institutionalize her, her determination to "seize the day" sets the novel's events in motion.
My thoughts about this book's similarity to Persuasion are that Valency, like Anne, fears that she will never marry; the neglect and disregard of her family is similar to that experienced by Anne Elliot; like Anne, she learns to assert herself, to think what she wants and to act on it; Valency's story, like Anne's, turns on some elaborate but deeply satisfying contrivances.
Montgomery is a funny, funny writer. Her descriptions of Valency's family, as Valency sees them, are hilarious. Valency is a character of deep thoughts and feelings; she is compassionate, a hard worker, and those readers who require a admirable heroine will be well-satisfied.
And, to me, although the conventions of the romance novel go back to the 18th century, Valency's reactions to her family circle and others show both a conventional view of proper female behavior and an ability to assert herself that will delight fans of Lizzie Bennet and Anne Shirley.
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