I use Goodreads mainly to keep track of my reviews and it has come in handy again – when I looked up Persuasion, it reminded me that I last read it around the end of 2017, before a trip to England, making this reread a fairly recent one. Although there is one difference – in 2017, I was younger than Anne, in 2020, I’m the same age!

My days as a literature student are long gone so I won’t try to talk about whether this is the best of Austen’s novels, but I do want to touch upon something that I noticed in this round of rereading: how eerily modern the characters are.

I don’t know about you but when I read books from the past or books set in the past, there’s an expectation that the people here are going to be somewhat different from the people now. That’s why characters in historical novels who hold modern opinions tend to come across as jarring. But although Persuasion was set over two centuries ago, the people in this English novel could practically be people that I know in real life in Singapore.

Anne and Wentworth, the ‘prideful’ lovers who barely dare to talk to each other when they meet again? That awkward pair of friends after a breakup (there are reasons why friend groups can splinter when a pair break up).

Mrs Russell? Your wise but sometimes misguided auntie or older parental figure in life; if you go to a CNY reunion, this is the person you’re glad to see but can’t take too much advice from. (To be fair, I don’t like Mrs Russell very much so this characterisation may be off).

Sir Walter and Elizabeth? I’m very sure that they’d be Instagrammers or some type of Influencers. They’ll probably love the attention social media can bring them and would definitely be @-ing every famous person they have a tenuous connection to.

The complications in the novel also arise from a problem that can be solved with Anne and Wentworth Using Their Words. We know, by the end of the book, that they’ve always loved one another but out of selfish pride/embarassment, they both kept silent and made each other suffer. Persuasion may have be over 200 years old, but this is a problem that we can still see today.

I enjoyed this reread and I’m glad that I own this. I don’t think I would have caught this earlier and I’m looking forward to when I next reread this book to see what else I’ll learn from it.