Tag Archives: Jane Austen

Longbourn’s Unexpected Matchmaker by Emma Hox

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Synopsis:
A retelling of Pride and Prejudice with a crucial plot element changed.

Review:
I tried to read Longbourn’s Unexpected Matchmaker, I really did, but from the first sentence the writing was so clumsy and prosaic that I just couldn’t go on past the first few pages. And I admire Pride and Prejudice as much as the next person, but it’s not such a beloved of mine that I feel like I need some fan fiction. Come to think of it, fan fiction isn’t really my cup of tea at all.

Many thanks to Rhemalda Publishing for the review copy.

Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart by Beth Pattillo

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Synopsis:
Sent to Oxford to present at a Jane Austen conference on behalf of her sister, an unemployed young woman pretends to be a pediatrician to impress a handsome bachelor and makes the acquaintance of a dotty old woman claiming to have the manuscript of Austen’s first draft of Pride and Prejudice.

Review:
Before I get into my review of Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart, I need to make a confession. The book’s editor–who also receives a heartfelt dedication from the author–is a good friend of mine. Like I was at her (small) wedding, and used to meet her for lunch at least once a month. My mother-in-law watched her cats. Her husband was instrumental in getting me and my husband together. I tell you all this because I get a lot of review copies of books but don’t let that influence my reviews. If I like a book, it’s because I liked it. And if I don’t like a book, I’ll tell you my opinion, too.

However, when it comes to books by friends I won’t pretend to be objective. I like to support their efforts in the world and give them a boost when I can. And in the rare event I couldn’t do that in good conscience, I’ve opted not to review the book at all. (It’s happened once or twice; I know a lot of writers.)

Fortunately, Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart is well-worth recommending to fans of Austen-inspired chick lit. It’s got some good musings on the nature of love and attraction, and gets in some nice jabs at some of the more overly zealous Austen fanatics.

I don’t think that Pattillo quite caught Austen’s voice in her fictionalized version of Austen’s first draft, but she did capture the spirit of her work. The prose just felt a bit too modern, not quite complex enough–though the other characters do admit that it’s not quite up to par with Austen’s published work. And I’m always bothered when a heroine tells an “accidental” lie that then goes on to color the plot o the book in a significant way. It’s a plot device that’s just a bit too convenient.

Many thanks to Guideposts for the review copy.

Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Patillo

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Synopsis:
Jane Austen scholar Emma hunts Austen’s lost love letters in the hopes of restoring her besmirched academic name and to prove to the world that Austen was wrong about happy endings.

Review:
I came to Jane Austen relatively late in life. We were assigned Pride and Prejudice as summer reading in ninth grade. Honestly? It bored me to tears. For this sole reason I eschewed majoring in English in college in favor of a theater/American Studies combo just so that I could avoid British literature in general and Austen in particular.

In my late 20s I got it in my head that I wanted to “do the classics,” and picked up Sense and Sensibility. I absolutely loved it. I tore through the rest of her works, thoroughly enjoying myself. For the record, Mansfield Park is my favorite.

All this to say that I don’t quite get the Austen-mania that fuels heroines in books like Jane Austen Ruined My Life. I mean, I get being enthralled by books–that’s a phenomenon I’ve experienced–but there’s no one book or author around which I’ve shaped my life. But I certainly don’t begrudge women like Emma their infatuation with Austen, because if anyone’s worth it, she is.

Jane Austen Ruined My Life is a charming read that takes readers on a journey through Austen’s England, and, by extension, her life. In reading the book I gained a greater appreciation for her achievements, and got very excited to reread her books. Author Beth Patillo has crafted a Da Vinci Code-esque puzzle for Emma to unravel, and to her credit makes it completely plausible. While the love story isn’t going to shake the earth, I did have great sympathy for Emma’s disenchantment with romance after the failure of her marriage.

I was glad that Patillo left out some of the chick lit cliches like the meet-cute and the requisite “heroine falling down the stairs/out of a cab/into a swimming pool” clumsiness. Emma is wounded, but thoroughly capable, and that was a refreshing change from the spawn of Bridget Jones. (Not that I don’t love Bridget Jones’s Diary, I’m just tired of ersatz Bridget.)

Favorite Author Meme

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Heather at Errant Dreams came up with a wonderful meme–enjoy & consider yourself tagged!

* Answer the questions as you see fit. Although they’re all phrased to ask about a singular author, feel free to respond with multiples, or even a list.
* Where possible & convenient (you don’t have to go as crazy as I did!), include a link here or there to an author’s website, your review of one of their books, or a review that inspired you to try the author(s), so your readers can get more information on anyone that sounds interesting.
* Tag five people and drop by their blogs to let them know you tagged them, or open-tag your readers.
* It would be nice if you included a link back to your tagger.

1. Who’s your all-time favorite author, and why?

I think I would have to say CS Lewis. I’ve read all of his books, many of them several times. I’ve read the Narnia Chronicles at least a dozen times, and books like The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters have meant a lot to me at certain times in my life.

2. Who was your first favorite author, and why? Do you still consider him or her among your favorites?

The first author I remember being obsessed with–as in, I’ve got to read everything by this person–was John Bellairs. He wrote gothic stories for kids illustrated by Edward Gorey that were imaginative and just scary enough, and the first one I read was The House with a Clock in its Walls. I’m saving a few for Superfast Baby when she’s old enough. I had read multiple books by other authors, but I was more into the series, than the author, as with the All of a Kind Family books.

3. Who’s the most recent addition to your list of favorite authors, and why?

Robin Hobb, without question. She’s a superlative storyteller and I just lost myself in love starting with Assassin’s Apprentice. I’d also add Leo Tolstoy and Jhumpa Lahiri to the list, having read both of them for the first time in 2007.

4. If someone asked you who your favorite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth? Are there any you’d add on a moment of further reflection?

Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Stephen King, Madeleine L’Engle, CS Lewis, Robin Hobb, George RR Martin, Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, Charles Dickens, Kathleen Norris, Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, Dan Allender, Edith Wharton, Jhumpa Lahiri.

Nothing really to add on further reflection. I spend a lot of time thinking about my favorite authors!

May I Introduce… (Booking Through Thursday)

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  • btt button
    1. How did you come across your favorite author(s)? Recommended by a friend? Stumbled across at a bookstore? A book given to you as a gift?
    2. Was it love at first sight? Or did the love affair evolve over a long acquaintance?

    You can find my favorite authors listed in the first sidebar column. Here’s a rundown of how I met them all:

    • CS Lewis–My father read the Chronicles of Narnia to me when was a little girl. For my 6th birthday, I had a cake featuring the old cover art from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In college, I attended a two-week symposium in Cambridge, England, sponsored by the CS Lewis Institute, and that’s where I fell in love with his non-fiction.
    • Edith Wharton–I hated Ethan Frome, but fell in lover with Age of Innocence in college. I tore through the rest of her books. Still don’t like Ethan Frome, though.
    • Flannery O’Connor love came from reading Wise Blood in high school.
    • Jane Austen–now that’s an interesting case. I had to read Pride and Prejudice in ninth grade and hated it. Just a few years ago, I decided to give her another chance, and read Sense and Sensibility. I adored it, and adored all the rest of her books… including Pride and Prejudice.
    • JRR Tolkien love grew from a lifelong adoration of Middle Earth from reading The Hobbit and watching the animated movies. On that same trip to Cambridge, I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time and my passion was sealed.
    • Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, and Barbara Vine were library reads. I had heard good things about them, and decided to take a chance.
    • Shirley Jackson I picked up while working in development for a film producer. We were looking for material and somebody suggested I check out her work. Ah, me! One taste and I was lost. I found a book scout in Canada who tracked down all her out of print books for me.
    • Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising was assigned reading in sixth grade. I immediately got my hands on the rest of the series, and have since reread it several times. I can’t wait to introduce them to Bean.
    • Walker Percy was yet another author I discovered in Cambridge. I read Lost in the Cosmos, then his fiction, then the rest of his non-fiction essays on semiotics. He played a big part in forming my identity in my early 20s.

    You may also notice I have a list of Author Sites I Love. Here’s how I met those folks:

    • Dan Allender was thanks to counseling with a former pastor.
    • David Bordwell from a grad school course on film narrative.
    • George RR Martin was a recommendation from my best friend from college.
    • Jeffrey Overstreet is a great blogger.
    • Laurie Halse Anderson wrote Speak, and there’s a whole story about me and that book that I’ll save for another day.
    • Libba Bray was recommended to me by an eighth grader at my old high school. I did a speaking engagement, and this girl was my mini-me–frizzy hair, socially awkward, and a huge bookworm.
    • Madeleine L’Engle I’ve blogged about before, in a post on books that evoked a strong emotional reaction in me.
    • Robin Hobb was a recommendation from the girlfriend of a college friend of my husband’s. This guy teases Melissa for reading what he calls “vampires in space” books. My husband likes to say, “How can you write a book about a dragon?” She and I hit it off immediately.
    • Save the Cat! is the site of a recent book on screenwriting that my manager made me read. I wish I had read it ages ago… it really does live up to its own hype.
    • Scott Westerfeld was discovered by me during a search to find young adult books that would make great movies. The Uglies series is being made into a movie, though not with me.
    • Stephen King saved my life freshman year in college, before I made friends and a life. I whiled away many a long boring night with one of his gazillions of books, checked out of the library.
    • T. Greenwood’s book Nearer than the Sky is quite special to me. A friend and I have an option on it and hope to turn it into a movie.

    And there you have it–wow, it’s amazing what I can do while the baby takes a nap!

    • 100 Most Influential Books by Women

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    Via BookGal–I’ve bolded the ones I’ve read.

    1. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
    2. Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire
    3. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
    4. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
    5. Virginia Woolf, The Waves
    6. Virginia Woolf, Orlando
    7. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
    8. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
    9. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
    10. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
    11. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
    12. Nadine Gordimer, Burger’s Daughter
    13. Harriette Simpson Arnow, The Dollmaker
    14. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
    15. Willa Cather, My Ántonia
    16. Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
    17. Erica Jong, Fanny
    18. Joy Kogawa, Obasan
    19. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
    20. Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child
    21. Doris Lessing, The Grass Is Singing
    22. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
    23. Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
    24. Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres
    25. Lore Segal, Her First American
    26. Alice Walker, The Color Purple
    27. Alice Walker, The Third Life of Grange Copeland
    28. Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
    29. Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
    30. Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
    31. Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
    32. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
    33. Susan Fromberg Shaeffer, Anya
    34. Cynthia Ozick, Trust
    35. Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
    36. Amy Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife
    37. Ann Beattie, Chilly Scenes of Winter
    38. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
    39. Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer
    40. Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays
    41. Mary McCarthy, The Group
    42. Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps
    43. Grace Paley, The Little Disturbances of Man
    44. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
    45. Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
    46. Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
    47. Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood
    48. Mona Simpson, Anywhere But Here
    49. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
    50. Toni Morrison, Beloved
    51. Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
    52. Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr. Fortune’s Maggot
    53. Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools
    54. Laura Riding, Progress of Stories
    55. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
    56. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower
    57. Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
    58. A.S. Byatt, Possession
    59. Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
    60. Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle
    61. Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
    62. Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
    63. Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
    64. Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
    65. Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
    66. Barbara Pym, Excellent Women
    67. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
    68. Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
    69. Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist
    70. Nancy Willard, Things Invisible to See
    71. Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
    72. Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Disturbances in the Field
    73. Rosellen Brown, Civil Wars
    74. Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
    75. Harriet Doerr, The Mountain Lion
    76. Stevie Smith. Novel on Yellow Paper
    77. E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
    78. Rebecca Goldstein, The Mind-Body Problem
    79. P.D. James, The Children of Men
    80. Ursula Hegi, Stones From the River
    81. Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
    82. Katherine Mansfield, Collected Stories
    83. Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills
    84. Louise Erdrich, The Beet Queen
    85. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
    86. Edna O’Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy
    87. Margaret Drabble, Realms of Gold
    88. Margaret Drabble, The Waterfall
    89. Dawn Powell, The Locusts Have No King
    90. Marilyn French, The Women’s Room
    91. Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter
    92. Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries (I just reviewed this one!)
    93. Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John
    94. Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle
    95. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
    96. Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
    97. Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day
    98. Alice Hoffman, The Drowning Season
    99. Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
    100. Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

    Umm… no Jane Austen?

    The Books of My Life

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    Here’s another meme (HT Poodlerat) that’s been going around that I’m finally able to do. Last night’s book read was an incredibly tedious memoir. Thanks for sharing!

    A book that made you cry: A book that seems to make a lot of my lists: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.

    A book that scared you: Hostage to the Devil by Malachi Martin. It’s five accounts of supposedly true possession and exorcism accounts, and it scared me so bad that I read it twice then gave it away in case I was tempted to read it a third time. Continue reading →