A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Nadia Knows Best by Jill Mansell. Sourcebooks Landmark (May 1, 2012) ISBN: 978-1402265167. Trade Paperback: $14.00 (Amazon: $11.08 / Kindle: $10.22).

When Nadia Kinsella’s car slid off the road in a snow storm, she ended up spending the night, talking about everything with Jay Tiernan, whose car had also run off the road. Somehow, Nadia assumed that Jay was gay and thus didn’t worry about impressions and relationship issues but just enjoyed the company — after all she had a boyfriend, Laurie Welsh, who worked as a fashion model.

Nadia lived with her father and two sisters in the home of her grandmother, Miriam Kinsella. Clare was slightly younger than Nadia and an artist. Tilly was 13 and still in school. Somehow everything worked out. Nadia was cautious, Clare a bit wild, and Tilly was quiet and studious. They even got along with Miriam’s loudmouthed parrot — Harpo. (I mean how can you resist a book where the loudmouth parrot is named after the silent Marx brother?)

Having read a previous book by Jill Mansell, I knew things were probably going to go wrong for our main character, Nadia — maybe even horribly wrong. But since these are considered chick lit romances, you can pretty well rest assured that the ending will be happy for our main character. Well, you’d be mostly right.

In point of fact things go horribly wrong for just about everyone — Miriam, Nadia, Clare, and even for their father, James. Mansell doesn’t necessarily follow the expectations of her readers — for the betterment of the book, if you ask me.

Nadia Knows Best as a title does imply that Nadia believes she knows what’s best for herself and others. Thinking you know what is in your own best interest, as well as that of those you love, is a sure fire way to find out just how little you know about your best interest, and that of your loved ones. While you may have the issues down solid — love, happiness, support — how those things are to be achieved is essentially a moving target with no single answer for anyone.

Nadia has her heart broken and her confidence shattered. But, she comes out swinging and when she runs into an opportunity to do the kind of work she’s always dreamed of doing, she takes a chance. Of course, that’s when everything goes pear-shaped and the family seems to be falling apart at the seams. Not because they don’t care for each other, but because they care too much.

In many books the family the characters are born into isn’t necessarily the family the stories are about. In Nadia Knows Best, a close loving family nearly loses each other because they care too much to put their feelings first. They fear that if they say what they want, that they’ll be influencing the other person and thus forcing them into something they don’t want to do.

As a reader, we’re glued to the pages, hoping that they’ll realize that talking things out with each other is how we not only communicate information, but how we feel, what we want out of live, and how we appreciate and love those around us. Mansell’s goal I’m sure was to tell as good story. That the story she told resonates with the reader would be an added benefit. The characters have real-life problems, maybe on a level that many of us don’t have, but none the less ones that real people deal with each day — dashed hopes, ex-spouses and all the baggage that entails: spite, love, loss, longing, caring, and hard choices. That’s what makes us human and what makes readers connect to a story.

Chick Lit is considered by many to be light and fluffy — but many of the authors write stories that have depth and deal with issues that readers deal with in their own lives. Enjoy Nadia Knows Best, it will entertain you and it just may get you to think outside the box.

. 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.

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.