A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Rumor has it by Jill Mansell, Sourcebooks Landmark, ISBN: 978-1402237508, pages 404, Price: List $14.00, Amazon: $10.08.

Jill Mansell’s Rumor Has It is hilariously funny as well as embarrassingly relevant. Tilly gets home from work to find her live-in boyfriend has moved out with all of his stuff. Not to worry, she’s not that broken up about it, except she can’t afford the rent without him. She comforts herself with a visit to her friend Erin in Roxborough. The visit is just what she needs, but before leaving to return to London, Tilly spies an ad for a Girl Friday and applies. With some assertiveness and a bacon sandwich, Tilly lands the job and moves in with Max Dineen and his daughter, Lou. Everything is going great until she falls hard for Jack Lucas who is rumored to be the hottest one-night-stand around.

Humor is very difficult to write. I know that’s the popular myth but think how often you tell a joke and everyone just stares at you waiting for the funny part — just after you’ve delivered the punch line. To write humor is to try to deliver that laugh to readers you can’t see and don’t really know. That said, Mansell’s Rumor Has It is funny. It’s laugh out loud funny. I’m sure most readers will recognize the situations because they’ve been there or seen it at one time or another. Maybe the situations weren’t as humorous at the time but, in hindsight, and happening in a book — perhaps you can see the humor this time.

Mansell’s characters are people you’ve met, been friends with, avoided like the plague, were forced to put up with, worked for, or heard about via rumors. All of the characters are well-developed and each has their own quirks. Erin doesn’t like to hurt people no matter what they do to her but she’s loyal and will defend a friend against all comers. Tilly wants romance and love but is afraid to get involved because she doesn’t want to get hurt. Stella thinks the world revolves around her and can’t understand why things aren’t going the way she planned for them to go.

I grew up in a very small town. In small towns, there’s very little to entertain one and gossip, a more sibilant word for rumor, and one that perhaps is more exact since it has that snake-hiss built in. Rumors can destroy people’s reputations and rumors can build a reputation. Remember a reputation is not necessarily a bad thing, it depends on what that reputation is and whether or not it’s true. Problems arise when the rumors don’t reflect reality. So, if you believe that everyone else is telling the truth and your experience doesn’t match the rumors would you admit to being different? Could you even convince people that the rumors are wrong? What if trying to set things right makes it look like you have a problem — would you talk about it then?

Tilly moves to Roxborough and needs to play catch up to learn what everyone else already knows. But what if, being new to the town, you don’t see things they same way. Do you go with what you believe or do you accept that the villagers know best?

Rumor Has It begins as Tilly’s story but there are several other plot lines involving other people, including Tilly’s best friend, Erin, scary Stella, Max Dineen’s ex-wife Kaye, and Max’s young daughter Lou — just to name a few. The point of view shifts to the character who can best tell the story.

It the book funny? You betcha it is. But it will also hit on a lot of other emotions as the various story lines play out and lives are disrupted and changed. Change doesn’t have to always be bad but sometimes it can get really depressing before it gets better. Love lost and love won can mean broken hearts and lives torn apart. Relationships in a small village with a very active rumor mill can be very iffy indeed.

First, I’m inclined to call Rumor Has It an old-fashioned romantic comedy updated to the present day. Many would call it Chick Lit. Whatever genre you put it in, it’s well written, funny, and relevant to people today and their relationships. Most of us have been the subject of rumors so we’ll know exactly how these characters feel.

I should mention that Rumor Has It is very British. If you watch British comedies and read books written by other UK authors, and have some knowledge of current British politics and social icons, you’ll get more of the jokes. The comedy is a bit off-the-wall, but totally believable. However, sometimes the humor is in a reference to a person, TV show, or political scandal. Don’t worry, the story is still very accessible and you’ll get most of the humor from context.

If you enjoy a good story with comedy, romance, and a bit of drama, give Jill Mansell’s Rumor Has It a try. She’s not an author I’d read before but her name is going on my “watch for this author” list.

The Man Who Loved Pride & Prejudice by Abigail Reynolds, Sourcebooks Casablanca, ISBN: 978-1402237324, pages 448, paperback.  (Amazon price: $6.99) (Previously published as Pemberley by the Sea in 2008 by Sourcebooks Landmark).

I’m always a bit trepidacious about reading a Pride & Prejudice follow on especially when it’s a modern retelling, however, Abigail Reynolds, not only manages to follow the spirit of Pride & Prejudice and the romance between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy but she also manages put in a retelling of that tale in modern times using the main plotline of her book. It’s an amazing bit of self-referencing and it not only works but packs an emotional punch just when the narrative needs it to move forward.

Since the book title is The Man Who Loved Pride & Prejudice, we expect that the characters will be mapped to those in Pride and Prejudice. Cassandra (Cassie) Boulton is a marine biologist who does summer research at BML in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and teaches at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. She grew up in the slums of Chicago and has worked extremely hard to make her dreams come true — to get stability and tenure and to have a career where she can be near the ocean. Calder Westing is the son of Senator Joseph Westing and grew up with wealth and all the advantages that wealth and a family active in politics and high society could provide. As with his prototype, he gives the impression of pride and arrogance. The book also has stand-ins for Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley in Erin, Cassie’s best friend, and Scott Dunston, Calder’s best friend.

Cassie spends every summer doing research in Woods Hole, which is a mecca of marine biology and oceanography research on the east coast of the United States, as well as a picturesque vacation spot. Erin, who is recovering from a bad relationship, came to be Cassie’s research assistant, and to pull herself together before her final year of graduate school. Erin had arrived first and met a wonderful man, Scott. Cassie is expected to meet Scott at the evenings contradance. Calder who just had a bad experience with his family is going to be spending part of the summer with Scott, but when he arrives he finds the house locked and a note from Scott telling him that he can wait or meet him at the dance.

The scene is set, the characters meet, and except for the modern setting and character changes necessary to update, if you’ve read Pride & Prejudice, you know how things are probably going to go. [Remember the first meeting of Elizabeth and Darcy was at the ball in the assembly rooms.]

Once in motion much of the action is predictable if you know the underlying story, however, even so Reynolds manages to surprise and entice the reader to get involved with these characters and their lives and before long you’ve forgotten the Pride & Prejudice of the title and become totally committed to this story. She tells the story mainly from Cassie’s point of view with occasionally forays into Calder’s viewpoint.

There’s a lot going on in The Man Who Loved Pride & Prejudice. There is the romance between Cassie and Calder. There is the romance between Erin and Scott. There’s the underlying story of Pride & Prejudice that is echoed in the main plot line. There’s the additional story of the updated Pride & Prejudice written within the story that echoes again the main plot line. And it works — it all comes together to be one of the best modernizations of Pride & Prejudice that I’ve read in quite a long time.

The Man Who Loved Pride & Prejudice is though, at heart, a romance or a love story. It’s modern and there are sex scenes that will heat your house or power all your electronics. But flipping through the book to check, there really aren’t that many sex scenes, they just carry a lot of punch. Reading two of the most steamy ones over again, I realized that Reynolds manages to use the readers to add the steam. She doesn’t, as some authors do, go into detail in these scenes. She sets the scene, writes suggestive descriptions and leaves us with a hot flash of epic proportions. I’ve always preferred allusion and suggestion to explicit in-my-face descriptions and I think I’ve figured out why — it’s far more powerful a scene when the reader’s imagination is engaged. A fact that many writers should take note of, in my opinion.

Reynolds manages to harness the reader’s imagination throughout the novel as she plays with our expectations. This raises the book from a very good exploration of the theme to a really great one. If Pride & Prejudice holds a place in your heart, definitely give The Man Who Loved Pride & Prejudice a try.

For those of you who love romance and love stories and have never read Pride & Prejudice, dive into this book. It’s a wonderful romance and I would expect after reading it that you’d be willing to give Pride & Prejudice a try to see just why Jane Austen’s book is still so popular so many years after its publication.

The Darcy Cousins: Scandal, Mischief, and Mayhem arrive at Pemberley… by Monica Fairview, Sourcebooks, ISBN: 978-1-4022-3700-3, pages 432.

The rift between Darcy and his aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh has been somewhat mended since Elizabeth has given birth to an heir. Of course that doesn’t mean that Lady Catherine actually recognizes Elizabeth’s presence. But the entire family is gathering at Rosings once more for Easter. Joining the family are Robert Darcy (see The Other Mr. Darcy) and his wife and two relatives from America, Frederick Darcy and his sister Clarissa Darcy.

Georgiana is hoping that she and Clarissa will become close friends. Georgiana has been feeling that she’s in the way or not really wanted. Darcy marrying Elizabeth was definitely a good thing but where Georgiana always had her brother for company now he seems always involved with Elizabeth and their son — they don’t purposely exclude her they just don’t seem to notice.

Once Frederick and Clarissa arrive, they seem to get off on the wrong foot with Lady Catherine. While Frederick can be accepted, after all he is American, a business man, and rich. Clarissa must learn to become a lady — of course that’s the type of lady that Lady Catherine approves of, and that’s where all the trouble begins. Clarissa is neither tractable or docile.

Georgiana and Clarissa do become friends. Georgiana learns that one can be a lady and still have strong opinions and interests of her own. When Clarissa is appalled by the way everyone ignores Anne de Bourgh and has Georgiana join her in her campaign to become friends with Anne, Georgiana begins to realize that she’s always just accepted things and never looked at them from the outside. She’s also surprised by what they learn. Her eyes opened, she begins to look at other behaviors she’s always accepted.

As is usual, one things leads to another and before long Lady Catherine is convinced that Clarissa is practically the devil personified, and there to ruin the family. Once again the family finds itself rent by Lady Catherine’s insistence on her point of view. Everyone decamps for London and the season.

Georgiana struggles to find her own way in society with her new insights. She learns that Clarissa is in England for more than this visit and that there are depths to her American cousin. In fact, soon Clarissa and Georgiana find themselves interested in the same man. But is he the right man for either of them? Will their friendship last through the season?

To say any more would spoil the fun of learning all the secrets, intrigues, and adventures to be had in The Darcy Cousins. The book’s advanced press implies that the book is all about Clarissa and her problems but this is really Georgiana’s story. Clarissa is the spur that goads Georgiana to action and change. Georgiana is firmly front and center. She’s always been in the background and this time Monica Fairview gives the reader a chance to get to know her a bit better. Shy? Yes, but also she has the same strong Darcy stubbornness and loyalty. It’s a turbulent story as Georgiana becomes a person most of us would like to know better and have stand at our side in adversity.

Another excellent follow on to Pride and Prejudice that maintains the integrity of the original characters while moving the story of their lives forward.

Recollections of Rosings by Rebecca Ann Collins is book 8 of The Pemberley Chronicles. (Published by Sourcebooks, ISBN: 978-1-4022-2450-8, 336 pages, $14.99 US/$17.99 CAN/£7.99 UK)

While this is book 8, I found it fairly easy to get into. This is only the second book in the series that I’ve read. I reviewed Postscripts from Pemberly back in December 2009. If you’ve read Pride and Prejudice, you’ve got an understanding of the major characters.  And while these characters have moved on, had children, had their children marry, lost loved ones — reading Collins’ work is like dropping in on a huge family reunion after being out of touch for a long while. The books, or at least the ones that I’ve read have an Appendix that lists the major characters and the relationships between them.

I’m starting by pointing this out because there’s a relaxed atmosphere about the stores in Postscripts… and now Recollections…. Collins has a way of presenting the stories partly through the type of narrative/interactive story you’d expect, but she also uses journal or diary entries and letters to help us get a deeper understanding of the characters that have a major part to play. This makes reading the books a lot like being asked to read someone’s personal journal when you know all the people involved (society pages without the cattiness).

Recollections of Rosings is, as you’ve probably guessed about Rosings, the major residence of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Lady Catherine has been gone for sometime and the estate is run by a board of trustees on which Fitzwilliam Darcy serves. The story opens with the terrible news that there has been a fire at Rosings that has caused considerable damage. The current Vicar, Mr. Harrison, suffers a heart attack and his continuing illness causes some drastic changes to his situation for himself and his family. His wife Catherine, one of Charlotte and Mr. Collins’ daughters, is now caring for her husband and dealing with her grief over the damage done to Rosings where she lived when Lady Catherine took her in as a young child to be a companion for Anne.

The Rosings estate has recently hired a curator to deal with the historic artwork and others treasures of Rosings. Luckily he had done much of the work to catalog what was in the house and it will be useful to the board in determining their loss and what can and should be done to rebuild. That he is also someone who had worked at Rosings while Catherine lived with Lady Catherine helps to bring back many memories and releasing many emotions of her childhood and early adulthood before her marriage.

Meanwhile, Catherine’s daughter seems to be falling in love with a young man in the neighborhood that few people know anything about other than he’s a gentleman and very good at his job. Beck Tate, Catherine’s sister, is at loose ends as her husband has gone to America on business, leaving her behind. Unfortunately for Catherine, Becky feels it is her duty to watch out for her supposedly more naive and unsophisticated sister.

That sets out the parameters of the book, but the journey and the experience of reading it yourself is the frosting on the cake. Collins is not flamboyant — the writing is very reminiscent of sitting about with a best friend talking about family, friends, what is happening with the neighbors, what’s going on, what can be done to make life better for those around you — and yourself, of course.

That’s not to say that you won’t shed tears, laugh out loud, try to get characters to look before they leap, get angry about how some are treated, wonder why other won’t mind their own business, and smile because sometimes love does conquer all. And best of all, for some people there are second chances and, while they don’t come often, when they happen you should not stand and watch them pass you by but reach out for new dreams and a new life.

There’s a very comfortable feel to The Pemberly Chronicles. These are people most of us have spent a lot of time with. Austen created characters that still resonant with us so many years after she wrote her books. That Austen often left her characters just as the leave they church after their wedding, it’s no wonder that so many of us want to know what happened next. Rebecca Ann Collins gives us one possible future — it’s a comfortable one that we can relate too that differs only in degree from the future we see around us for our friends and family.

These are wonderful books for a rainy day — or any day — when you want to believe that people are good at heart and that families stand together in times of trouble. These are books that continue the story of some well loved characters but they are also books of hope and of dreams of communities that many of us would like to live in.

Cowboy Trouble by Joanne Kennedy. ISBN: 978-1-4022-3668-6, 416 pages. $6.99 mass market paperback/ $4.79 Kindle edition. On sale March 2, 2010.

Libby Brown always wanted to have a farm. That was definitely impractical while working as a journalist in Atlanta — not much scope in farming on your balcony. However, when her love life goes up in flames, she decides “chickens will never break your heart” and buys a ranch and heads to Wyoming. She barely arrives before her next door (but miles away) neighbor show up to welcome her to the area. Luke Rawlins makes a fine first impression even though he’s decked out like a cliché movie cowboy. But she welcomes the help and the information and who wouldn’t want to spend time with those eyes and the dimples. There’s a lot to learn about running a ranch with a herd of chickens while holding down a job on the local paper.

She begins to meet the people of Lackaduck, Wyoming. There’s the handsome sheriff who seems very committed to his job and is definitely making an effort to get to know Libby. Luke seems to always be around and the tension between the sheriff and Luke is palpable. When Libby hears that there’s next to no crime in Lackaduck but there is an unsolved murder still on the books, her journalistic juices start to flow.

I’d never read anything by Joanne Kennedy before but she sure got my attention with Cowboy Trouble. The story moves at a snappy pace with the point of view shifting smoothly from Libby to Luke to fill in some background information and keep the reader in the information loop. The unsolved mystery drives the story as Libby uses all her skills to identify the killer or at least to turn up some new evidence in the case.

On the level of a mystery, the story is top notch. Kennedy plays fair with the reader and the clues are all there to be collected so that the reader should be able to figure out what’s going on. Of course, the fact that Libby is a bit slower than the reader just adds to the tension. We can guess what’s going to happen but no matter how much you yell at the page, Libby just does her own thing.

The book is billed as a romance and there’s definitely all the expected tropes of a romance. Kennedy has a light touch and even while ratcheting up the tension on the mystery, she keeps the romance boiling and the humor unexpected but appropriate and a welcome tension reliever. Though I must warn you that even though the sex is very low key and more vague innuendo than exactingly detail (vague is good, and Kennedy is great at this) some of those scenes sizzle so much I thought the book was going to spontaneously combust.

All in all this is one heck of a good book when you just want to put your cares on the back-burner and forget about your problems for a few hours. Libby is strong, independent, witty, and definitely not to be trifled with. Kennedy manages to write Libby as a fully developed character who doesn’t do dumb things just to move the plot along. She does occasionally do some real dumb things, but always with solid reasoning behind the acts — you could imagine if you were Libby you’d do something similar.

Reading Cowboy Trouble by Joanne Kennedy is like stepping into another world and being the proverbial fly on the wall. If you enjoy mystery, romance, or a bit of both — you’ll want to add this to your To Be Read stack (and maybe bump it to the top).

Marsha Altman continues the story of The Darcys and the Bingleys in Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape, bringing us to 1812. This is book three of the series following The Darcys and the Bingleys and The Plight of the Darcy Brothers. While the lives of the major characters have continued since Pride and Prejudice, Altman has remained true to the character of each person and yet allowed them to grow and change, not to mention beginning a new generation of Darcys and Bingleys.

The book opens as the entire clan gathers at Netherfield, which Mr. Bennet has had to rent, for Kitty’s wedding. It’s an occasion that allows the reader to catch up on the growth that has taken place and refresh their memories of the previous books. It also sets up the relationships between the characters and their families, so what happens later in the story fits into these new and expanding friendships and family connections.

Once past the confused chaos and joy of the wedding, we’re hit with incident after incident with little quiet time to relax until the end of the book. That’s not to say the book is episodic or has gaps that make the story jerky — it’s just much more of an action adventure thriller than the sedately paced story most readers would expect from a Pride and Prejudice follow on. In fact, I don’t think any of Altman’s books are quite what you’d expect, but they are nevertheless some of the best follow on stories to Pride and Prejudice that I’ve read to date. Each volume is filled with humor, quirky happenings, incidents that will have you laughing right out loud, as well as scenes that will catch at your heart and put a tear in your eye.

You probably wonder why I’m not getting to what the book is about, well, it’s a book that brings a lot of characters together in way that you would not expect, doing things you probably would never have thought possible. Lady Catherine de Bourgh finally invites the Darcys to Rosings and of course she has ulterior motives that in themselves bring on some especially trying and unexpected consequences. Dr. Maddox’s brother Brian has invited him to visit with him and his wife in Transylvania. It’s a strange letter and Dr. Maddox feels he must not just respond but take the journey to find out for himself what is going on. Darcy has lost contact with his brother, Gregoire. The war is heating up in Europe and many of the monasteries are being disbanded. Concerned that traveling alone could be dangerous, Darcy and Dr. Maddox decide to travel together. When their wives receive notes that make them suspect that something is going on, Elizabeth and Caroline put aside their differences and set out on a mission to discover what has happened to their husbands.   Bingley and Jane, of course, need to stay behind and watch over all the children, related businesses and establishments. I’ll leave it up to the reader to determine who had the worse part of this adventure.

There are plenty of incidents that occur in England and in Europe and Altman manages to keep us informed on what is happening to each of these various groups: Darcy and Maddox; Elizabeth and Caroline; Gregoire; the Bingleys, and the Fitzwilliams. Just as in life, it’s complicated, but once you begin you just can’t put the book down. I ended up reading it through four times preparing for this review because if I opened it to look up something, I ended up rereading it. In fact, I’m about one third of the way through again.

So don’t waste any time, Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape should be available from Amazon and from wherever you usually buy your books. But don’t start reading until Friday night because you’ll want to finish it in one go and start over again to savor the humor, the adventure, and the pleasure of spending time with the Darcys and the Bingleys.

NOTE: Tomorrow’s post will be an interview with Marsha Altman about Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape and other books planned for the series. Please check back for the interview and to enter a contest to win a set of all three of the books that have been published in this series so far.

Stick Man by Julia Donaldson. Illustrated by Axel Scheffler. Arthur A. Levine Books, AN Imprint of Scholastic Books. ISBN: 978-0-545-15761-2, hardcover. $16.99 US/$19.99 CAN.

Stick Man is a delightful story about a stick man who lives with his stick wife and children in a very nice tree house. He goes out to jog and spends nearly a year having one adventure after another trying to get back home to his wife and children. Stick man is mistaken as a throwing stick, a Pooh stick, nesting material, beach detritus, building material, and kindling among others. Each mistaken identity leaves him struggling to escape and find his way home.

The drawing are semi-realistic as you can tell from the cover image. The drawing adds visually to the journey, showing the changing seasons and the various plights in which Stick Man finds himself. The colors are bright and cheerful and the people and animals realistic.

The text is simple and mostly rhymes. It’s difficult to do a book in rhyme and Donaldson manages to do without being too cutsey or over-the-top. I’d imagine a young reader would get caught up in the tale and cheer on Stick Man to find his way home.

The book was published in September 2009. The ending is very Christmas oriented and leaves a nice feeling of completion to the story. I’d suggest that this would make a great book for children anytime of the year but the tie to Christmas at the end makes it an especially good Christmas book.

The only problem I had with the story is wondering about the message underlying the story. Stick Man goes off one morning and doesn’t come back for a year. He doesn’t, of course, call home and he just shows up expecting to be taken back into the bosom of his family as if nothing has changed at all. It worked for Job’s wayward son but I’m wondering about the subliminal impact the book would have on children whose fathers have abandoned the family. Would they see this story as a reason to believe that he’d return and everything would be as it was? I don’t know. It just occurred to me on a third reading that there was another way children might interpret the story so I thought I should put it out here for potential buyers of the book to be aware of the circumstances of the child to be gifted with the story. In some cases this might be just the underlying message you want to convey in other, well, maybe not.

The Christmas Magic by Lauren Thompson is a simple story of Santa Claus who lives alone in the woods. As the Christmas holiday approaches he can feel the magic and opens his workshop and prepares a bag of toys for the children listed in his book. He polishes the sleigh and the bells and gets ready for deer to come to fly him on his rounds on Christmas eve.

The illustrations are beautiful and simple in style with deep rich colors. Santa’s orange-colored wooden house has a bright and cheerful red door that makes it look very inviting. The snow is brilliantly white with a rich deep blue sky at night and lighter blue during the day. It’s a story of the season that sets out Santa Claus as a being who is used to the magical holiday traditions.

I can see the story’s appeal to young children as it slowly shows Santa preparing for his big night. However, I wonder just how many children can hear this story or read it to themselves and not ask questions based on what they know about Christmas. Where are the elves? Who made the gifts? How do the names of naughty and nice children get in his book? How can he just show up and pack the sleigh with presents? Where did they come from? How do the reindeer know to show up?

While it’s a wonderful story and very much in keeping with the season and the holiday spirit, this is so out of line with the accepted givens of the Santa story and myth — that it may take a lot of talking to get children to understand that some people may believe that things happen in ways other than what we’re used to hearing.

Not that this is a bad thing. It’s actually nice that children would get a chance to explore some new ideas about Santa and Christmas traditions.