It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you’re a fan of Jane Austen you must’ve, at some point, heard the following tidbits about the famed author:

1. Jane Austen and her sister, Cassandra, were ride or die.
2. Jane was not of a sweet and saintly disposition. She was witty but also as cutthroat as her timeline allowed her to be.
3. After Jane’s death, Cassandra took it upon herself to destroy whatever correspondence of her sister’s she could get her hands on, so as not to tarnish the memory of the writer whose fame erupted post-humously.

In her latest novel, Miss Austen, Gill Hornby sets the wheels of her imagination in motion on the subject of Jane Austen’s lost letters. The year is 1840, about 23 years after Jane’s passing, and a 67-year-old Cassandra is headed to Steventon where the head of the Fowle household has just passed. At her arrival, Cassandra is greeted by Isabella, the current inhabitant of the house, and her would’ve-been niece had she and Tom Fowle ever made it to the altar. As the artifacts left in the home are about to be redistributed among the children of the family, Cassandra must get creative and maneuver herself around Isabella and her grumpy (albeit loyal) housemaid, Dinah, in order to find Jane’s past correspondence with Eliza Fowle —  her and Jane’s dear old friend — and destroy any compromising, unflattering evidence that might taint the author’s memory.

As she finds the letters and begins to read them, Cassandra steps into a nostalgic reverie, taking us along as we revisit imagined scenarios of Jane Austen’s life through the eyes of the one person who knew her better than anyone.

Hornby’s characterization of Jane is immaculate and as close to a fictional representation of the author as we’re ever going to get. Hornby handles her semi-biographical work of fiction with a trained eye so that we see Jane Austen in realistic, believable situations, reacting as fans of her work would imagine someone of such quick observational wit would. Though the story is told from Cassandra’s perspective, and much of the narration is how she is relating to the events that constructed their lives, we’re not robbed of Jane’s fascinating charisma — if anything, it’s amplified in a way that telling the story from Jane’s own point of view might’ve missed.

Hornby’s own style and voice are strikingly similar to Jane’s own: articulate though creative, wistful while also comically unforgiving. Hornby also takes time to delve into the prejudices of the time (which to an extent persist even today) that an unmarried woman without children must not lead a happy life. Cassandra sees herself and her sister as living representations of women who made it into late adulthood without marrying and having children, fulfilled in different ways, without any sense of incompleteness. They had each other, and their aspirations, and it was all they needed. Fans of Austen’s works will also be able to recognize, through Hornby’s interpretation, the people who helped inspire many characters in her beloved novels.

Miss Austen is a deeply moving portrayal of the ascent and untimely demise of this world-renown and much-adored author, but it’s also, and perhaps more prominently so, about the deep, unbreakable connection forged between two sisters, surpassing the limits of mortality and time.