Channeling Jane Austen

“Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.” Jane Austen wrote that in her final novel, Persuasion. The line, of course, refers to the complicated relationship between protagonist Anne Elliot and her ex-fiancé, Captain Frederick Wentworth, who unexpectedly meet eight years after their breakup. Two centuries later, Kyleigh Leddy ’19 quotes Austen’s words to open her novel Worse Than Strangers, a modern reimagining of Persuasion that reunites not two but four ex-lovers amid the heat of a Nantucket summer.

Leddy, who teaches creative writing at BC’s Woods College of Advancing Studies, is a lifelong Austen fan, but she didn’t set out to reenvision the legendary author’s story. Leddy’s first draft of what would become Worse Than Strangers, her debut novel, was simply about a mother and daughter on separate journeys of love, longing, and regret. Soon, however, Leddy noticed similarities between the themes of her story and her favorite Austen novel. Persuasion chronicles Anne’s emotional turmoil as she becomes reacquainted with Captain Wentworth nearly a decade after being pressured into ending their engagement by her family of nobles, who have since lost their wealth. It’s a story that explores the power of influence, the loss of youthful optimism, and the long-term consequences of past decisions, and Leddy decided to apply these timeless topics to her own novel as well. “It was interesting to play on the idea of regret and longing,” she said. “My idea was, what does that look like nowadays?”

Leddy’s contemporized version of the tale follows Rose and Lily Gardner, a mother and daughter who find their summer upended when they encounter exes on Nantucket. Lily is a down-on-her-luck twentysomething who has fled New York City for her family’s island home after being fired from her job. Upon arriving, she is devastated to see her first love, Henry, in the grocery store accompanied by a fiancé she didn’t know existed. Lily soon finds herself wrestling with regret over the past, navigating a clandestine connection that she and Henry still share, and yearning to rekindle their relationship in between pickleball games and beach bonfires. At the same time, her mother, Rose, is struggling with reignited feelings of affection for Thomas Wentworth, a former flame who she is shocked to find renting the family guest cottage. His last name is one of a number of “nods and winks” to Persuasion that will appeal to Austen lovers, Leddy said, but other references are less obvious. “It’s a little cheekier,” she said of her novel. “You might recognize some characters and a lot of them will be brand new, and that’s fun as well.” In addition to Austen, Worse Than Strangers takes inspiration from Leddy’s personal and professional experiences. For one thing, she grew up visiting Nantucket, where her mother now lives, and sneaks plenty of local references and summer-season traditions into the story. And Leddy, a practicing therapist, made Rose one as well. The author said she used her clinical background to give readers a glimpse into her characters’ psychology, including Lily’s struggle with anxiety.

The exploration of human psychology was also an important component of Leddy’s first book, The Perfect Other: A Memoir of My Sister, about her late sister’s struggle with schizophrenia. The timeless human emotions showcased in nineteenth-century literature such as Austen’s novels are part of what continues to make the material so ripe for adaptation by authors today, said Leddy, who will teach in the Woods College’s new master of arts in writing and the human condition program, which she cofounded, when it launches this fall. “The plots are immersive, fast paced, funny, and emotional,” she said. “They feel real. No matter where you are in time, I think that’s true.” ◽