Toby Litt is best-known for writing his books – from Adventures in Capitalism to (so far) Patience – in alphabetical order (apart from the non-fiction ones); he is currently working on Q and R.At the Guardian, Litt tagged ten favorite escapes in books, including:
Persuasion by Jane AustenRead about the other entries on the list.
Anne Elliot is the oldest of Austen’s heroines, and the longest-suffering. In order to reach her happy ending, she endures years of confinement. She isn’t literally in solitary, but – as an unmarried not-so-young woman, dependent on her demanding father, she is as trapped as any prisoner. Worse still, she has no true companionship. She is surrounded by a grotesque gallery of the neurotic and the interfering, the boring and the presumptuous.Only the reader knows Anne’s true worth. Her victorious escape from the hell of the English country house to be together with her true love, Captain Wentworth, makes her years of anguish worthwhile – almost.
Persuasion is among Lore Segal's ten favorite books, four books that changed Sasha Wasley, Cristina Merrill's five classic romantic stories that still ring true today, Melissa Albert's top fifteen male characters in Jane Austen's novels, Yiyun Li's six favorite novels, Joanna Trollope's six best books, Paula Byrne's ten best Jane Austen characters, Marjorie Kehe's list of ten perfect books for Valentine's Day gifts, Howard Jacobson's 5 favorite literary heroines and top ten novels of sexual jealousy, Elizabeth Buchan's top ten books guaranteed to give comfort during the ending of a relationship, and appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best concerts in literature.
The Page 99 Test: Persuasion.
--Marshal Zeringue