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Tag Archives: Jane Austen
“Longbourn” by Jo Baker
I learned about “Longbourn: a Novel” by Jo Baker when a friend posted about it on Facebook. She wrote, “Just finished the best book I have read in months, ‘Longbourn.’ Read it immediately. It will fill you with joy.” And Voila! I was perusing the New Books display at Bennett Martin Library, and there it was. It contributed to one of my favorite things–a weekend when I started AND finished a book.
“Longbourn” might be described as “Pride and Prejudice” as experienced by the household staff. Jo Baker takes the skeleton of events from “Pride and Prejudice” but writes a totally separate, stands-on-it-own story. Its primary focus is Sarah, a young housemaid who came into service from the orphanage. She comes across as practical, competent, and intelligent. Once a new footman joins the staff, we see how she learns for love. Her awareness of the limitations of her situation grows as she finds herself wanting more than a life of laundering, scrubbing, and emptying chamber pots. Baker’s spot-on depiction of the stress of difficult work, done with only the family’s good will as job security, keeps the story from growing saccharine.
I was struck by how well Baker portrayed realistic misunderstandings as people get to know each other romantically. She impressed me when one of the contenders for Sarah’s affection shows himself to be a much better man than we expected. Overall, I admired how she gathered together the household staff and created a family of them under the wing of Mrs. Hill, the housekeeper. It rang true when sometimes their life together seemed claustrophobic in how closely they work with and observe each other.
I’m not sure this book needs to be recommended since it can ride on the coattails of the always popular Jane Austen and currently popular “Downton Abbey.” Even so, I will recommend it to readers who will appreciate the quality Jo Baker instilled here. Her writing doesn’t try to be Jane Austen’s, but might be described as of the period.
Aside from a few quibbles about some anachronistic social views, I agree with my friend. “Read it immediately. It will fill you with joy.”
“Death Comes to Pemberley” by P.D. James
One of my favorite customer service people at the Mail Plus store on South Street called my attention to “Death Comes to Pemberley” by P.D. James a couple of months before it came out in December.
The book is a P.D. James mystery in a Jane Austen setting, a kind of sequel to “Pride and Prejudice.” While skeptical that anyone, even the fabulous P.D. James, could do justice to Jane Austen, I was intrigued. Over the holidays I began “Death Comes to Pemberley.”
James creates the setting just a few years after Elizabeth Bennett marries Mr. Darcy. As the story opens, Elizabeth’s sister Lydia arrives at Pemberley on a dark and stormy night, to announce hysterically that her husband, the notorious Wickham, has been killed in the Pemberley woods.
From there, a classic mystery evolves. P.D. James writes well, and she crafts a mystery just as well. I enjoyed reading this story. I liked the references to “Pride and Prejudice” and even to other Austen novels. But I missed two critical pieces–Austen’s light touch, and her focus on the women.
Alas, I’m married to someone who doesn’t appreciate Jane Austen’s sense of humor. I’ll often read aloud from what I consider a hilarious excerpt, and he just doesn’t laugh. But really, that humor is all over Austen. It’s in her clever conversation and observed gestures. The central act of this book, a death, squelches any chance of the light touch. The sense of appropriate solemnity at Pemberley hangs heavy throughout the story.
Much of the action revolves around Mr. Darcy, a stand-in for Adam Dalgliesh perhaps. I found myself wishing that P.D. James had instead woven the story around Elizabeth.
I don’t like what I’ve written because I wanted to love this book, and hoped to have only good things to say about something written by P.D. James.
I’ll still recommend this book to mystery readers, and even to fans of Jane Austen as an interesting accessory. I just won’t go overboard in my enthusiasm, and I’ll be clear that this is definitely a P.D. James book. And as I should have known from the start, if I want Jane Austen…then I need to read Jane Austen.