Run away with us for the summer, let’s go upstate

I spent most of this book being bummed out or annoyed at the protagonist (which hasn’t happened since Atonement YEARS AGO, yaaaaaay), so I was as surprised as anyone when the ending snuck up on me and brought some tears with it, even though SURPRISE EMOTIONS ARE THE WORST.

Longbourn focuses on those who were left out of Pride & Prejudice, the servants. Mr. and Mrs. Hill are in charge (well, Mrs. Hill is in charge), and Sarah and Polly, the two housemaids, round out the staff. Sarah has basically grown up taking care of the Bennet girls, washing Elizabeth’s petticoats (SIX INCHES DEEP IN MUD) and taking care of all of their gross stuff so the fancy ladies can pretend to the outside world that their bodies aren’t disgusting ooze factories.

(That was the point of the book, right?)

Their small world is thrown into upheaval with the introduction of a new footman named James, who seems to show up out of nowhere. Sarah, in particular, is very suspicious of where he came from and resents the disruption to the household, even though having James there means less work for her. She’s also forming an attachment to one of Mr. Bingley’s footmen, who seems like a nice enough bloke, and I mostly just hoped everything would work out OK for him. HE WAS TRYING SO HARD.

I found myself growing bored at several points of this book, wondering when Sarah was going stop trying to catch James in a lie. Like, LAY OFF, BRIONY. This is also much bleaker than a typical Jane Austen novel, which makes sense, given that it focuses on the much harder-to-navigate world of a servant during this time PLUS ALSO a war is going on and it turns out war is pretty awful, especially if you’re poor GOOD THING THINGS HAVE CHANGED SO MUCH SINCE THEN HAHAHA oh wait, now I’m depressed again.

Still, even though I got bored at moments (which, I just realized, isn’t the novel’s fault, but most likely my own fault for reading this after reading all of the Bridgerton books), and I got depressed as hell at others, I found myself just as wrapped up in Sarah’s happiness as I was in Lizzie’s. There were bits of the novel I could have done without but I suppose they provided a look at this time period that’s left out of most novels, certainly the novel that it’s based upon. I don’t really want to say more for fear of spoiling the story but suffice it to say, your thoughts of characters both good and bad may be tainted forever so TAKE HEED.