Non Fiction

The Jane Austen Remedy Ruth Wilson: Allen & Unwin, $33

Last year Wilson, 88, was awarded a PHD from the University of Sydney. The subject of her dissertation was Jane Austen, prompting a newspaper headline “A Ruth universally acknowledged”. She has now written a book – part memoir, part love letter to Austen’s novels, part validation of fiction readers everywhere. Wilson examines her life framed and illuminated by Austen’s universe – from the great expectations of youth, the joys of motherhood, the disappointments of middle age, to the torpor of advancing years … until, like Anne Elliott in Persuasion, she finds the courage to seize a second chance and transform her life. Wilson believes that fiction shows us unimagined possibilities. It worked for her. MAUREEN SHERLOCK