How to Read a Novel: I, Beginnings — Persuasion, Jane Austen

Do you want to read more classic fiction? Do you want to know more about how novels work, their technique? Do you want to do this in a low pressure bookclub-style setting? Join Henry Oliver, who writes The Common Reader for this series on How to Read a Novel.

In this series, we will learn how novels work: the clues that novelists leave us. Each book is a tapestry. All the threads work together. Nothing is there for no good reason. As we learn more, we become better readers.

We start with Persuasion, Jane Austen’s last novel. Why does it have such an unromantic opening? And what can we learn from novels openings in general?

The rest of the books for the series are:

Silas Marner, George Eliot
A Room with a View, E. M. Forster
The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Gate of Angels, Penelope Fitzgerald

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