Tag Archives: Persuasion

Persuade Me (Darcy and Friends #2) – Juliet Archer
Choc Lit, September 2011
Review copy from the publisher
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Persuade me is a modern retelling of Persuasion. In this version of the story, Anna Elliot is a University Professor of Russian literature, while Rick Wentworth is connected to the sea not as captain of a ship, but as a Marine Biologists – in Australia. When Rick returns to England for a book tour, will their feelings for each other revive?

I have reflected before on what makes a good Austen rewrite: plot or character? Having read Persuade Me, I’m still no nearer to an answer, but both elements played a part in my enjoyment of the book.

For one, the plot of Persuade Me, despite the small changes in occupation of the characters, quite seamlessly follows the one set out by Austen. At 340 pages, the book is a lot longer than Austen’s novel. Reason? Juliet Archer does not just portray Anne’s point of view, but allows the reader more than a glimpse into the thoughts of Rick as well. Again, I am left to wonder if a re-imagining of the work of Austen has to follow all the major plot points. While Persuade Me was nice and enjoyable, and offered a suitably refreshing new setting for most of the key passages, at times it did become a little predictable. Is this problematic? Not so much, readers who look for retellings know what they are getting in to, they might even enjoy knowing what happens before hand up to some extent – or perhaps, this is the very reason they read these stories. Did I enjoy seeing things coming? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes, not so much.

As for the characters, most characters I thought were “updated” remarkably well. Most of Anna’s silly family members’ character traits were magnified. This  made the criticism levelled at them and the level of fun-poking less subtle. While I prefer Austen’s subtle social irony over Juliet Archer’s more blunt (compared to Austen) style – I think it worked really well for the setting of this novel. However, there was one character that bothered me, and that was Rick Wentworth. Perhaps it’s me, but I never pictured Wentworth as some buff hero with a tough exterior. I am sure I was meant to understand that this tough person has a soft and yielding inner self, but I never really got to that part because I was too busy being annoyed with his weird conjectures about Anna and her relationships. Anne Elliot in Persuasion is easily, next to Fanny, the character I most identify with in novels by Austen, and the re-imagining of Anne as Anna was very fitting (except that I couldn’t understand the change from Anne to Anna, and worse, the nickname ‘Annie’). I could look at her and think: yes, that’s me. However, never did I read about Rick Wentworth and go “oh, I understand what she sees in him” – not even a little. Again, probably due to my taste in men, but it bothered me. Perhaps it is this sense of magnifying what happens in Austen’s book that started to take its toll here: In Persuasion, Wentworth is somewhat jealous and this (amongst other things) makes him realise that he still has feelings for Anne. In Persuade Me, the same mechanism is at work but enlarged and modernised, which makes that Rick’s jealousy is triggered at numerous occasions and has him imagining supposed sexual encounters of Anna with strangers. As a reader, I found this aspect of Rick’s nature hard to reconcile with his supposedly overwhelming love and complete understanding of Anna.

In many ways, Persuade Me was an entertaining read and a fun & refreshing retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. However, I personally felt that Rick Wentworth’s character was portrayed too much like a Mills & Boon hero instead of the character I remember from Persuasion.

Note: This book is part of a series by Juliet Archer, called “Darcy & Friends”. However, all books can be read separate from each other and are not connected except by the foreword written through Darcy’s eyes.

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