I want to echo what Rachel G says in a post below: The Group Read gives an opportunity to slow down, dissect, analyse, ponder, and find the nuances. Thanks to all who are contributing to this enriching experience.

I find the language and sentence structure in Persuasion to be particularly dense and often non-linear. It is a challenge for me (and I do consider myself a great reader, though I take pleasure in many things!) to make it through a paragraph without having to go back through parts of it several times to understand shifts in who and what is being written about. If not for the GR and all the wonderful posts – often focusing on a single sentence, a paragraph, or one incident or character at a time, I know I would be missing a great deal. And without the fascinating posts about L&T – especially about the Navy – I would be quite lost about how the small amount of information JA provides about Wenthworth’s career actually tells us a great deal.

And yes, the emotions take you all over the place! In the lines that JoAnn cites, I think that the three sentences there demonstrate well what JA does throughout the novel: infuse small scenes or passages with a huge amount of information and often shift from one emothion to another. I believe that one can almost hear Anne catch her breath as Wentworth sits: “We are on the same sofa!” Poor Anne! Her “agitations” are mentioned much later, but first, we find humor: ”no insignificant barrier.” And then what should we make of the ON telling us that “Wentworth should be allowed some credit for the self-command with which he attended to her if not that he might have otherwise been looking around that barrier to "Anne’s slender form, and pensive face" ???

A fast and choppy roller coaster for sure, and easy not to catch it all unless you really slow down.