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Letters to Alice

On sale

31st March 2011

Price: £9.99

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Selected: ebook / ISBN-13: 9781444717662

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Alice is an eighteen-year-old student and aspiring novelist with green spiky hair, a child of the modern age who recoils at the idea of reading Jane Austen. In a sequence of letters reminiscent of Jane Austen’s to her own niece, ‘aunt’ Fay examines the rewards of such study. Not only is her correspondence a revealing tribute to a great writer – it is also an original and rewarding exploration of the craft of fiction itself.

Reviews

The Times
Wise and wonderfully funny
Guardian
Wise, sharp, informative . . . the advice about writing is sane and splendid . . . what I liked best about this book was its comic but reverent approach to true acts of imagination, in writer or reader
Books & Bookmen
Witty, convincing and spirited . . . both a fascinating study of Jane Austen and a novelist's enquiry into her own art
Hilma Wolitzer, New York Times Book Review
A study of a writer (and reader) thinking aloud about art and civilization . . . it should be required reading, a prerequisite for students of literature.
Daily Telegraph
Full of pithy reflections on Jane Austen's life and the society of the day . . . full of unsuspected wisdom
Times Literary Supplement
She writes with conviction and wit