Persuasion, Chapter 23!

My GOODNESS. So. This is clearly not a "podcast" in its truest form, but it IS something I listened to -- for the 8923475th time -- as I walked across the Manhattan Bridge this week (it's in two parts: here and here). I don't have a more favorite moment in anything Jane Austen ever wrote.

It's the climax of Persuasion, the moment that her two most emotionally mature characters -- Captain Frederick Wentworth and Anne Elliot -- get to their most vulnerable and exposed spot. I meannnnnn:

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.

And ON. IT. GOES. I don't want to spoil it too much, but it's so brilliantly Jane Austen: letters being written and read, emotions finally honest and raw, characters overcoming pasts and regrets and poor choices and all senses of unrequited love to finally combine the way we ALWAYS WANTED THEM TO.

I listened to another podcast about Jane Austen this week as well, and though I didn't adore it, the woman being interviewed was asked something about which of Austen's books she'd take with her on a desert island. Her answer was mine: Persuasion, of course, but then spending a great deal of time on the island lamenting the fact she couldn't ALSO take Pride and Prejudice.

Thank GOODNESS I don't have that dilemma.