It’s such a tone-deaf device, demonstrating so little sensitivity to the delicate precision of Austen’s writing, that you wonder why she didn’t just go the whole hog and bung in some comedy trombone quacks and an audience laugh track. Cracknell beefs up the humour by having Johnson repeatedly make winking eye contact with the camera. But now, with fortunes reversed, they meet again. Anne Elliot (Dakota Johnson) was persuaded not to marry the then penniless Frederick Wentworth ( Cosmo Jarvis) seven years before.

The gauzy melancholy of Austen’s story about lost loves reunited is mothballed in favour of a sassy romcom reading of the material. Book review: The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer bookreview megwolitzer thefemalepersuasion contemporarybooks booktwt bookaddict booktwitter. But this adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, by the theatre director Carrie Cracknell, from a screenplay by Ron Bass and Alice Victoria Winslow, is a travesty. DISCLAIMER: This review could contain possible spoilers based on my opinions. Greta Gerwig’s Little Women handled the balance elegantly and The Personal History of David Copperfield, in the hands of Armando Iannucci, matched irreverent humour with respect for Charles Dickens’s classic. She’s been on the ‘obedient, good-girl track’ all her life, and though smart enough to know the answers, she’s not yet confident enough to give opinions.T he sweet spot for period literary adaptations is to combine an instinct for the spirit of the original work with a distinctively modern sensibility. We meet Greer aged eighteen, in the vulnerability of late adolescence. And though the book is indeed timely, it’s worth noting, as many (including the author herself) have, that Wolitzer has been writing books that explore these dilemmas for almost thirty years.

It explores the relationship between two women from different generations – the eminent feminist Faith Frank and her eager mentee Greer Kadetsky – who come to work together in fighting sexism.

It is for this reason that people are describing Meg Wolitzer’s twelfth novel, The Female Persuasion, as timely. And though most of this activity has happened outside the law, it is to be hoped that these changes in social attitude will be absorbed into our justice system. Together, we are renegotiating what kinds of behaviour will cost you your job or your freedom. As a society we are redefining what constitutes an abuse of power while also taking into account the imbalance of that power across gender lines in companies and communities. Right now, we are living through a period of historic feminist activity.

The female persuasion review