Longbourn joins the very long tradition of auxiliary Jane Austen novels and deftly moves to the head of the class. It is one of the better ones out there and MILES ahead of the hated “Austen novel tittle and monster X” books. The book succeeds largely because Jo Baker doesn’t try to ape Austen’s style or plot, she simply tells a story around the narrative structure of Pride and Prejudice. It’s a fairly compelling book that details the lives of the servants to the Bennet family. […]
Patience is a virtue. . . .
I’ve read most of the other “Diary” books by Ms. Grange – Henry Tilney, Edmund Bertram, Captain Wentworth. . . . She has a way of capturing the story behind the story that is fun to read without monkeying with the original. Here, we get to see the behind the scenes and into the thoughts of James Brandon, the Colonel of our dreams, if not (at least initially) Marianne Dashwood’s dreams. The book starts with the young Brandon coming home from school to Delaford, which […]
Eleanor & Marianne & Sigmund?
So I had to try this one after doing the P&P&Z trilogy last year. The whole Quirk Book thing has been hit or miss, and this one was a miss for me. Part of what I liked about the first P&P&Z book was how seamlessly the zombie story was integrated with Austen’s original. Not so much with this book. The story took us too far away from the original, putting the Dashwoods in ridiculous peril, pitting them against the entire undersea world (rivers, lakes, everything […]
Christmas with the Darcys
This is subtitled: “a holiday tribute to Jane Austen,” and is written by some of the more prolific (or at least high-profile) Austen adjacent writers. Amanda Grange does the “diary” books (Mr. Darcy, Captain Wentworth, Colonel Brandon, Edmund Bertram, Henry Tilney, etc. I’ve read a few of them, and they’re pretty good). I haven’t read any of Sharon Lathan’s books, they look more like romancey type stuff that I don’t really enjoy). Not sure who Carolyn Eberhart is. Eberhart’s contribution is “Mr. Darcy’s Christmas Carol,” written […]