A Curious Statistical Anomaly

. Sourcebooks Landmark (March 1, 2012) ISBN: 978-1402259739. Trade Paperback. $14.99 (Amazon: $11.18 / Kindle: $9.99).

Jack Caldwell gives the men of Austen’s world a chance to shine. Napoleon is planning his escape from Elba. And we all know what that means — Waterloo is almost inevitable to be part of the story; after all there are three colonels in this story. Colonel Christopher Brandon of Sense and Sensibility, Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam of Pride and Prejudice, and Colonel John Buford for this story. With Napoleon’s escape they are all called upon to serve their country again.

This is a follow on story. Marianne and Christopher Brandon are now happily married with a daughter named Joy. The Darcy’s are also very happy in their marriage and have a son, Bennet. Many of the people from Sense and Sensibilities and Pride and Prejudice show up. All the Bennet daughters are married now. Carolyn Bingley is engaged to Colonel Buford when the story begins. Lady Catherine and her daughter, Anne, are also included.

Through flashbacks, Caldwell explains how Caroline has changed since loosing Darcy to Elizabeth. It also sets up how Colonel Buford fits into the scheme of things. There are multiple threads in this novel, one thread follows Anne de Bourgh’s transition from sickly daughter to a force to be reckoned with. A second thread follows Caroline Bingley’s rebuilding of her life after Pride and Prejudice. A third show the changes in the relationship between Colonel Brandon and Marianne with a few surprises. Next is a thread that follows up on Denny and Wickham. And, we must not forget the biggest plot line of all — the escape of Napoleon and the historical events that led to Waterloo, the battle, and the aftermath.

If you love the world and characters of Jane Austen’s creation but do not enjoy the nitty-gritty history of her time, give The Three Colonels a try. Caldwell, while he does cover the battle of Waterloo and the events leading up to it, brings it closer to home by covering it through the eyes and feelings of the characters that we’ve come to know well through books. Austen wrote of the daily life of the kind of people she knew and observed. Caldwell pulls the men of her fiction into the historical events of her lifetime. While the people of England were separated by the channel from the fighting, it still impacted them, especially if they had loved ones in the service.

We like to think of wars as being something that doesn’t effect us. We’re safe, and those stories in the news don’t effect us. But many of us, as in Austen’s time, have husbands, fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, and relatives who have or are in wars being fought in faraway lands. Jack Caldwell uses the lives of characters we’re familiar with and care about to show that while times have changed and the technology may have changed, the destruction of war effects us all.

Read the The Three Colonels for the joy of seeing what’s happened in the lives of the characters we know through Austen’s works. Read it for the chance to see dry history, spread out before us, as history effects and impacts the people of the time. Or, simple read The Three Colonels for telling a darn good story and making Caroline Bingley a woman most of us would actually be glad to know.

Mr. Darcy Forever By Victoria Connelly. Trade Paperback. 336 pages. Sourcebooks Landmark (April 1, 2012) (Amazon: $10.98 / Kindle: $9.99)

Sarah Castle is seven years older than her sister, Mia, and that seven years made the difference when their parents died. Sarah quit school got a job as an accountant and continued to raise her sister.

Sarah is sensible and cautious. She now is self-employed, which makes it much easier to handle her OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) symptoms. Mia, on the other hand, is nearly all emotion and impulsiveness — good traits for an actress probably, but harder to deal with in normal every-day activities.

For Mia’s twenty first birthday, Sarah rented Barton cottage. One of the things that both sisters enjoyed was the works of Jane Austen. As sisters, Sense and Sensibility held a special place in their hearts. However, as often happens, plans that should lead to a satisfying week of together time instead leads to the sisters being ripped apart as a man, also on vacation, catches Mia’s eye while playing for Sarah’s attention.

The rift between the sisters results in them not speaking to each other for nearly five years. Things have changed in each of their lives in that time, but they are unaware of these changes and the effects that they have caused in their goals and desires.

Connelly sets up the division in their lives and then, after an appropriate period, sets in motion the events that will bring them face to face. What happens next will shape their futures. Will they get together and patch things up? Are they so hurt they’ll never forgive? Or will the magic of a Jane Austen Festival and a chance encounter bring these sisters together again?

In the process, we get to vicariously enjoy the Jane Austen Festival in Bath which takes place every September. As much as I enjoy the novels of Jane Austen, it never occurred to me that Barton cottage could be rented — it can, but as a B&B, rooms not the entire house — or that Bath had a yearly Jane Austen Festival. I looked them both up on the internet and did a lot of wishful thinking about both these new discoveries. See, books are educational.

Connelly’s story telling is top notch. The characters are engaging and the basic premise keeps the reader interested even if you figure out the major plot points before you get to them. After all it’s not so much that you know X happened, it’s what X means or how it affects the character’s lives.

There’s plenty to entertain and much to chuckle at but also some interesting characters to care about that resonate with a well loved story by a favorite author — Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen — who also cautioned against leaping before one looked at the consequences of their leap.

I enjoyed the book and hope you do too. If you have read it let me know what you thought — I love comments from other readers.

Got both issues up last night. Just need to polish the chrome and dust off the falcon and we’ll be ready to go.

Added a few movies that are now in theaters to the Movie columns this month.

Persuasion: A Latter-day Tale by Rebecca H. Jamison. Trade Paperback. ISBN: 978-1599559476. 240 pages. Cedar Fort, Inc. (February 14, 2012). (Amazon: $9.89 / Kindle: $3.82)

This tale is aptly named as it is all about second chances. If you’ve read and loved Jane Austen’s Persuasion, you’ll know the basic story. Anne Elliot was too young when she fell in love with Neil Wentworth. He was ready to commit but she was unsure of her heart. She allowed her family to persuade her to break off with Wentworth. They went their separate ways but now at the start of the book, the two meet again. She’s just as in love with him as she was before but she has no idea what his feelings for her are now — afterall, she broke his heart.

The story opens when Anne is setting up the yard sale to sell the things her father and sister have agreed that they can live without. Her father needs to sell her childhood home and move into a smaller house along with Anne’s older sister, Liz. Mr. Elliot is overextended and has maxed out all his credit cards.

On the day of the yard sale, she learns that there is a buyer for the house — Jack Wentworth, Neil’s brother. Jack’s coming over to look the house over and he’s bringing a friend. Anne is worried and her worst nightmare comes true — the friend is Neil. Later she learns that Jack has decided to buy the house and Neil is now a police detective, which is what he planned to become when they were dating. Neil seems aloof and uninterested in Anne and she can barely blame him after the way she treated him. She’s praying that he still cares for her but is afraid to hope too much.

Jamison has done a wonderful job of updating the original story to fit in today’s society with its different mores and values. Since all the main characters in Persuasian: A Latter-Day Tale are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), many of the values that were looked for by Jane Austen’s characters are also the ones that these characters look for: integrity, honesty, truthfulness, and a strong commitment to their religion. In this case different religion but with many of the same core values as those held by Austen and thus her characters.

What that means to the reader is that there are no lustful sex scenes. Jamison has to tell her story with only the actions and feelings of the characters that Austen would put on the page. She also has to set the characters into this world and this century. Neil Wentworth is a police officer. Anne Elliot works at a brokerage firm helping people weather the economic crisis. Mr. Elliot is always looking for a way to get rich quick and appear to be more than he really is. Liz Elliot is much better in attitude and attributes than her Austen equivalent but that may be because she needs to work in this century.

There is some talk of Mormonism and church functions but, based on the publisher, members of the church are the expected audience. However, while in a few places I thought it went a little over the top — hitting us on the head with details (and I am a Mormon) — it doesn’t detract from the story too much. Jamison also does show that no matter what your religion, there are bad apples in every group — otherwise how could you have tension and demonstrate the naivety of believing that just because a person shares your religion that you should trust them with no other criteria considered.

Jamison has, in my opinion, managed to stay closer to the core story of the original Austen Persuasion than many other authors and tells a good story with people you come immediately to care about. Anne is resilient, strong, and has grown up enough to recognize her own wishes and desires and is now willing to admit to herself what she wants out of life. Since the story is set in modern times there are some surprising twists and turns on the way to reaching what we know will be the best of all possible endings for these characters.

So, if you loved Austen’s Persuasion and have been put off by the blatant sex in some of the more recent retellings, Persuasion: A Latter-Day Tale may be just what you’ve been looking for. Give it a try.

Please take the time to leave a comment if you’ve read the book, I’d like to know what you think. But then I’m always anxious to hear from my readers.

Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale. Trade Paperback. ISBN: 978-1608196258. 288 pages. Bloomsbury USA; 1 edition (January 31, 2012) (Amazon: $14.61 / Kindle: $9.99)

Charlotte Constance Kinder is nice. She’s been nice almost from birth. She did all the right things. She got married and had two children, Lu and Beckett. Once the children were in school, she got a bit bored and started her own online business. It was a great success and she sold it for a lot of money. Bored again she started another company which also was successful. Then Charlotte’s husband divorced her. Charlotte was blindsided by this and continually tried to figure out what she did wrong. By the time her ex married his mistress, Justice, Charlotte barely felt anything anymore. But she was still nice — it was habit by now.

On the suggestion of a friend, Charlotte read the novels of Jane Austen. Of course, we can guess what happened next. Charlotte felt emotions again — gentle, tiny flutterings, but emotions none the less. When the children go to stay with their dad and stepmom, what’s a mother to do? Book a vacation in Austenland, of course.

I’d read Austenland when it first came out so it’s been a while. I still loved meeting some of the characters that I’d first been introduced to then. Charlotte was more than ready to enjoy Austenland, after all she was nice and appreciated the little niceties of civilized behavior that Austen portrayed in her books. Readers who’d first visited Austenland in the previous book will note right away that Austenland has fallen on hard times of late. Of course that could be due to the war with the French — provided you stay in character. For those of us, in this time period, we see the signs of marital strife over assets coupled with an economic downturn.

Never the less, Charlotte’s vacation is going well, until she finds a body. No one believes her and she must decide what to do, how to find out who was killed, and who is to blame. This is a vacation that will change Charlotte’s perceptions of herself and her previous life. Once her vacation in Austenland is over, Charlotte will never be the same.

Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale is much darker than the Austenland. The previous book was basically a romance and this one is a murder mystery with romance. The characters are interesting and as quirky, witty, charming, and annoying as you’d be likely to meet during a Regency country house stay. The story is also told from Charlotte’s point of view, with flash backs to previous periods in her life. Charlotte makes a great point of view characters as she has a habit of arguing with herself — some of which made me laugh out loud.

If you enjoyed Austenland, you’re sure to enjoy Midnight in Austenland. However, you don’t need to read the first book in order to enjoy this one. Pick up the book, settle down with your beverage of choice and slip away with Charlotte to Austenland.

Compulsively Mr. Darcy by Nina Benneton. Sourcebooks Landmark (February 1, 2012). ISBN: 978-1402262494. 359 Pages. (Amazon: $9.89 / Kindle: $9.99).

It’s all the rage to adopt a child in a foreign country — and engenders more social status if the child is dissimilar to the adopting couple in ethnicity. So, Mr. and Mrs. Hurst have decided to adopt a child. Charles Bingley decided they needed someone responsible to come along so he invited William Darcy — that it would also get Darcy out of the office was a plus. So, Bingley, Darcy, the Hursts, and Caroline are in Da Nang, Vietnam, to meet with the managing director of Gracechurch Orphange, Jane Bennet, and hopefully pick up their child.

On the way to their hotel, they end up in a traffic jam. Charles can’t stand sitting still so he hops out and asks a man riding a bicycle carrying a load of live chickens if he can try riding it. Of course he falls, scattering chickens and managing to gash his leg badly enough to require stitches. Darcy swings into action and learns of a local hospital with an American doctor, and hires a bicycle taxi to take them there. Darcy can’t bring himself to enter the hospital due to his fear of germs and painful associations, so he opts to wait outside.

When the waiting becomes intolerably longer than it should be, in Darcy’s opinion, he seeks out Bingley only to find him still waiting for treatment. Darcy is outraged and demands to see the doctor while lifting the towel over Bingley’s leg. A glimpse of the blood on Bingley’s leg causes Darcy to faint. A clog prodding his face trying to bring him to consciousness is his first introduction to Dr. Elizabeth Bennet. Neither comes out of this encounter proud of their actions.

Thus begins, Compulsively Mr. Darcy by Nina Benneton. This modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice contains many of Austen’s beloved characters: The Bennets, Darcy and Georgiana, Fitzwilliam, Anne and Catherine de Bourgh, Wickham, Mrs. Reynolds, and a couple of surprises from another Austen novel. However, Benneton has updated them by examining their characteristics and matching them to current medical labels. For example, Mr. Darcy, who we know wants to protect those he cares about and takes all his commitments to others including his tenants and servants very seriously, suffers from, as title of the book implies, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Charles Bingley, on the other hand, has recently been diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). You can see that Pride and Prejudice makes this seem a very logical character choice from this quote:

“Oh!” cried Miss Bingley, “Charles writes in the most careless way imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest.”

“My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them — by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.”

Being a modern retelling of the story, not only were the characters updated, but the story was revamped to fit into our current society. Darcy is, of course, rich. He’s CEO of DDF (Darcy, Darcy, and Fitzwilliam). Fitzwilliam, his cousin, is a vice president. Bingley also works there. Meanwhile, Jane Bennet, as you’d expect from her patient and loving nature, is a social worker now running an orphanage founded by Aunt Mai and Uncle Gardner while recovering from an abusive relationship. Elizabeth is an doctor specializing in infectious diseases. She moved to Vietnam with Jane to keep her company. The relative social status is maintained as Mr. Bennet is a college professor. The Bennets are middle class and, while not hurting for money, do not spend it wildly either.

My only reservation about the characters is that the Elizabeth Bennet of the original was a great student of character until she allowed her first impressions to cause her to assign to Mr. Darcy characteristics he didn’t actually deserve, after which she became more careful of her judgements. This Elizabeth is impulsive and quick to judge others with minimal data. She makes life changing decisions without consulting those involved in her decisions and without input from those close to her who might be effected. Being a doctor who also does research in her field, this particular implementation of her character seemed too much of a contradiction. How could she possibly maintain her position as one of the top infectious disease specialist and be so incredibly flakey? Other readers may not have as much difficulty with this aspect of her character, but I wanted to make sure she met a very large clue stick. In other areas, it was incredible how these two very different people turned out to be just right for each other — and that takes clever writing when trying to be true to well-loved characters in a new environment and the changes that requires.

While Compulsively Mr. Darcy maintains the fractious nature of the original character’s relationship as they grow towards understanding and love, the details have changed radically since society and social mores are now very different from those of Austen’s time. As with many romances, there are sex scenes. For some traditionalists, this may be off-putting. However, the sex is steamy, fairly graphic (including phone sex), but easily skipped over if you like dislike such scenes. There are also several subplots that deal with today’s problems of inappropriate sexual contact.

Well written, witty, comedic and serious by turns, Compulsively Mr. Darcy has it all — quirky characters, evil villains, surprises, disappointments, and a great love story.

NOTE: Remember, I love to hear from my readers so if you’ve read the book or plan to let me know what you think.

Dreaming of Mr. Darcy by Victoria Connelly. Sourcebooks Landmark (January 1, 2012). ISBN: 978-1402251351. Pages 370. (Amazon: $10.19 / Kindle: $9.99)

Kay Ashton’s mother was a patient at The Pines, which is where Kay became friends with Peggy Sullivan. When Kay’s mother died, she continued to visit with Peggy and read to her from Jane Austen’s works. Peggy had lost her sight and she enjoyed having Kay visit and share some of her favorite books. Somehow the age difference between them didn’t make any difference to their wide ranging discussions and shared interests. When Peggy died, she left Kay her entire estate with the hope that Kay would do something amazing.

Reading Persuasion had always made Kay wish that she could live by the sea. With the money Peggy left her, Kay decided to move to Lyme Regis and try to put her art degree to use by putting together her drawings for publication. For years she’d been working on illustrating the works of Jane Austen but had never sent her work out or tried to be published.

Visiting Lyme Regis to see what cottages were available, Kay found nothing she liked in her price range until she happened to see the ad for Wentworth House. It was large enough to be a Bed and Breakfast and thus, even though expensive, would allow Kay to make a living within sight of the Cobb and the sea.

Kay hadn’t even opened her B&B when a burst pipe in a local hotel led to a search for lodging for the director and four of the principle actors of Persuasion. Yes. Kay’s favorite book was being filmed in Lyme Regis. This was indeed a dream come true.

Once all the people are in place, Dreaming of Mr. Darcy is a delightful romantic comedy. Kay, an only child from a broken home, has always lived more in her fantasies than in reality. She can take the wink and smile of a handsome actor and in her mind be picking out their china pattern, children’s names, and where they’ll spend their next several vacations. She doesn’t stop with planning her life around the deeper meanings of kind gestures but tries to match others into happy couples with no actual information on how those people feel about each other — much as Emma Woodhouse tries to match Miss Smith with the vicar, and with about as much luck.

Kay’s flights of fancy are embarrassing as the reader can’t do anything about the train wreck she’s about to make of her life. We can only hope that things work out for the best. After all, Austen managed to pull her main characters together for a wedding at the end and a hopefully happy-ever-after.

This is not about Mr. Darcy or Pride and Prejudice. Dreaming Mr. Darcy is closer to Persuasion since it takes place in Lyme Regis and a movie of the book is the catalyst for much of the action. The story, at heart, is all about second chances and missed opportunities.

While Kay is the main character in the beginning, once the actors appear on the page, the point of view shifts between Kay, Adam Craig (the writer and producer of the film), and Gemma Reilly, who plays Anne in the movie. We don’t have just one romance developing we have several and they all come to a head in Lyme.

Dreaming Mr. Darcy is filled with interesting characters, wonderful descriptions of Lyme Regis and the surrounding countryside, and enough miscommunication and misunderstanding to keep any reader turning its pages.

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

This bill, which is on the fast track to passing in Congress, is so bad for free speech, the freedom of the internet, and the people who use it, that I’m baffled that Congress would even consider passage. But then I remember that Congress thinks pulling Americans off the streets and imprisoning then indefinitely, without knowing what they are accused of or by who was a wonderful enough idea to pass. Does this sound like America to you — well we’re swiftly becoming one of those countries who violate human rights and repress their people.

I’ve already signed petitions and written to my representatives begging them not to pass this legislation. Please join the fight for freedom in America and ask your representatives to vote NO on these two pieces of legislation.