Book #1 Longbourne by Jo Baker

Longbourne


There are many books that have riffed off Pride and Prejudice and many terrible unauthorized sequels like PD James 'Death Comes To Pemberley', because of this I was somewhat wary of Longbourne and came to it quite late.

What makes it different, and the reason I gave it a chance is that it offers something that feels like a fresh take by retelling the story from the perspective of the Bennett families lowly servants on their small estate.

I enjoyed this book but I also found it quite hit and miss. Some of it is very well observed. Would Elizabeth Bennett for example have traipsed about the countryside getting her petticoats three inches deep in mud if she'd had the washing of them? Ditto other household chores of the age like making soap from scratch and having to boil and reuse menstrual napkins.

By sheer coincidence, prior to reading this book I'd had a long conversation on Twitter about the uncertain nature of Mr Bingley's background. Just why was a young man of breeding and fortune on the hunt for a Rent-A-Mansion? Why didn't he have a family seat?

This book posits that the Bingley's made their money from the slave trade and were plantation owners which suddenly casts the affable cheery Mr Bingley in a new unpleasant light. But this got me to thinking that with all of our landed gentry Austen heroes a good source of their wealth must have come from exploitation of those 'beneath them' be it slavery, or through owning mills or collieries or via the feudal system.

It does take a wider perspective of life at the time and that it wasn't all drawing rooms and balls for everyone.

Sarah, a maid and one of the main characters, who begins to fall for the new footman James is likeable as a protagonist, and the much harried Hill, likeable too, and there were a lot of nuances about the James back story that I liked in terms of the way they impacted the original novel.  I liked how each chapter was prefaced with a sentence from a Pride and Prejudice indicating which part of the novel Sarah's story was running concurrently to. I also loved how the below stairs staff were completely on to Mr Wickham from the start.

It does have a tendency to drift though, and the section featuring James's experiences in the army was unnecessary. For reasons I can't be clear on without spoilers the denouement is quite silly and would have worked much better had the roles been reversed.

It's a good book, if not a great one.

8/10         

Book #34 Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park was the last Jane Austen I had left to read, and possibly the Austen novel I have liked least all in all, as such, a short review follows.

Fanny Price is her latest 'lady without a fortune' who is brought up by well meant but unkind relatives who don't wish her to 'rise above her station'. I read something suggestive of the idea that Austen wrote this with the purpose of deploring 'the lack of good moral conduct in the YOUTH OF TODAY' and used Fanny and her cousin Edmund as role models of behaviour. Whilst both the Misses Bertrams are pretty vile, Aunt Norris a horror and Henry Crawford a cad, I saw nothing particularly amiss with Mary Crawford's accurate assertion that 'going to church is pretty boring actually'.

Fanny and Edmund despite being the heroes are both ghastly prigs, and with the whole purpose of the book being to moralise at people, it does not as a consequence have the life or wit of her other novels.

Read to 'complete the set' it's not really worth it for the sheer length of the thing, unless like me you've read all the other ones and this is the last one you've got left.
 

Meh 6/10 Tweet

Book #65 Death Comes To Pemberley by PD James

Death Comes To Pemberley

Like many, I am a big fan of Pride and Prejudice, both the original Austen novel and 1990's BBC adaptation starring Colin Firth. Over the years, many "sequels" have been produced by other writers, with mostly insipid, cheesy covers capitalising upon and sullying another writers genius, at which I have resolutely turned my nose up.

But....the premise of this was, in theory, a different and original look from a respectable writer with established credentials, a murder mystery, with our beloved couples at the centre. The idea was too good to resist.


Sadly the execution does not match the readers anticipation. Darcy and Lizzie die a little under James' pen, and lose their charisma Lizzie particularly losing all vivaciousness, and the portrait of their life at Pemberley is very slight. Both seem cowed by others at times and not at all their assertive selves.

When I turned the page to the description of a servant scrubbing the silver, I sighed with a "Who Cares?" disappointment, and the entire servant saga was completely uninteresting.

At the end of Pride and Prejudice we are told that Kitty Bennet divides her time between the Bingley's and Darcy's and becomes a great friend of Georgiana and yet James chooses to erase Kitty from the story entirely and she does not feature except as a passing mention.

Additionally great chunks of the novel seem to recap past events from Pride and Prejudice and even in some cases, recycle dialogue used in the Andrew Davies script, though the reader has a fondness for this history, it seems to exist to bump up the word count, if these elements were stripped away, you would perhaps be left with a short story or at best a novella.

The only thing of note was an expansion of the story behind the relationship of Wickham and the mysterious baddie Mrs Young, but taken as a whole, the novel is sub par as an Austen sequel, and if it were a novel in its own right and therefore not relying on Austen's already established parameters and characterisation, it would be abysmal.

I will be returning to my former rigid rule of never reading a sequel not by the original author, a phenomenon which has always dismayed me and am really rather mad at myself that I broke that rule for this mess. 2/10      

Book #99 Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey 
 

Those who know that I'm a Jane Austen fan are probably very surprised to discover that in spite of reading certain of her books more than once, I have not, and still have not read her entire output, of her completed novels I still have Mansfield Park remaining.

Like Miss Austen's other works, Northanger Abbey is a tale of a young woman with no particular fortune to speak of debuting in society and getting caught up in romantic intrigues so far, so Austen. Catherine Morland travels to Bath as a particular companion to neighbour Mrs Allen and establishes friendships with two families also sojourning in Bath, the Thorpe's and the Tilney's. After her stay in Bath, Catherine is granted the opportunity of a stay at the Tilney seat, the impressive Northanger Abbey.

The novel has two main successes : you care passionately enough about the characters to have the strong desire to reach into the book, physically shove John Thorpe and tell him to "Do One" or "Get Lost" in less Scouse terms. Henry Tilney is also a delightful hero, who makes you feel a bit warm and squishy inside, which is what you want from an Austen novel, essentially. 

There are two main drawbacks : The novel is clearly a parody upon Mrs Radcliffe's The Mystery Of Udolpho indeed it makes the point plain. I once tried to read said novel and did not succeed, primarily because the typeface on my edition was blindingly tiny. This parody at points proves slightly irritating. Austen also clearly has a bee in her bonnet and a personal point to make about the social opinions of the time regarding novels, particularly women's novels, and is using this novel as a vehicle to convey her opinions, when she should rather have written an Op-Ed for The Times or something.

The other drawback is a compliment - there just isn't enough Mr Tilney time, and Mr Tilney is awesome. I suppose the conclusion of the novel is rather inevitable, but I feel it's all done rather awkwardly, I mean, personally I wouldn't be able to see my father in law without feeling anger and mortification for the rest of his life, instead of humble gratitude, but I suppose that is how society has evolved for the better.

All in all enjoyable and sweet, and I should enjoy enormously an adaptation involving Benedict Cumberbatch as Tilney.  8/10