A Curious Statistical Anomaly

A Darcy Christmas: A Holiday Tribute to Jane Austen. Stories by Amanda Grange, Sharon Lathan, and Carolyn Eberhart. Soucebooks Landmark. ISBN: 978-1-4022-4339-4, pages 304. Trade Paperback. October 2010. (Price $14.99 / Amazon: $10.19 / Kindle: $9.68)

A Darcy Christmas is a collection of three novellas featuring characters from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The stories are: Mr. Darcy’s Christmas Carol by Carolyn Eberhart; Christmas Present by Amanda Grange; and A Darcy Christmas by Sharon Lathan. All in all, a nice book to cuddle up with on a cold holiday evening.

First we have “Mr. Darcy’s Christmas Carol by Carolyn Eberhart. As you might guess from the title, this story is loosely based on Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”. In this version, Darcy has been greedy with his feelings. The ghosts in order of appearance are his father to warn him of the coming ghosts and then past, present and future are his mother, Lady Anne; his sister, Georgiana; and his aunt, Lady Catherine. Following the original story lines but with the change of feelings rather than money, Eberhart manages to pull the story together making it and interesting and apt variation.

The second story is “Christmas Present” by Amanda Grange. Jane and Bingley have a newborn son. Darcy and Elizabeth expect their child to be born in the new year. Elizabeth is not about to let pregnancy keep her and Darcy from spending the holidays with the family at Jane’s new home. But it seems Mrs. Bennet invited Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins to stay at Jane and Bingley’s manor also. You can imagine the holidays with all the Bennets, Bingleys, Darcys, Hursts, Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins all in the same house. Grange manages to balance all the characters and keep us entertained.

Ending the book, is “A Darcy Christmas” by Sharon Lathan. Note so much a story as vingnettes – each centered around the Christmas holidays. Each piece shows the reader an incident from the life of Darcy and Elizabeth. We get to see them grow as a couple, have children, face the loss of loved ones, watch their children grow and have their own families — the gathering for the holidays increases as the generations continue to meet at Pemberley. This was a nice capstone piece to the book.

In the stores now, you can pick it up to read during the holidays when you want to remember what they’re all about as the chaos and stress rise. Christmas is for family, friends, and loved ones to gather and share the love and concern for each other. A Darcy Christmas is all about love and family.

In the Arms of Mr. Darcy by Sharon Lathan. Sourcebooks landmark, Trade Paperback, October 2010, ISBN: 978-1-4022-3699-0. Pages: 384. List Price: $14.99. (Amazon: $10.19 / Kindle: $9.68).

In the Arms of Mr. Darcy by Sharon Lathan is a follow-on to Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth and Darcy have been married for a year. Elizabeth is settling into her role as mistress of Pemberly, and they now have a child, Alexander.

The Bennet family and other friends and relatives are gathering at Pemberly for the holiday season. Naturally, with the new child and a houseful of family and friends there is a lot of grist for the plot mill. Lathan manages to squeeze a story of married bliss, new romance, thwarted love, a mystery, a betrayal, and a couple of presentations at court into one book.

What is achieved is an interesting look into the life of the landed gentry at the time of Pride and Prejudice. Then there is the continuing romance between Darcy and Elizabeth. As a married couple, they do their best to see that all those they love become as happy as they are. Darcy is more than the standoffish aristocrat of the original story and is shown to have depth of feeling and good sense.

However, the fact that the book has so many subplots, makes it seem unfocused. The mystery subplot has potential, as did several of the other subplots, to be fleshed out and become a stand-alone novel. Instead these interesting sub-stories are set up, minimally touched on, and dropped or solved to get back to the main story of the married live of the Darcys.

That’s not to say the book isn’t worth reading, after all, it’s well written and continues to allow readers to see the Darcys after their marriage. They manage to have a full life that, as with all newlyweds, is rife with the compromises needed to live together in harmony, as well as the usual minor dramas involved in daily living on a large estate with the responsibility for many other depending on their ability to stay solvent as society changes about them.

In the Arms of Mr. Darcy will not leave you wishing you hadn’t read it, but instead will leave you wondering what is going to happen to the people in the subplots that weave in and out of the main story. Will there be another book filling us in on those characters and incidents, particularly those that involve friends and family or business relations of the Darcys’? We can but hope.

Meanwhile, In the Arms of Mr. Darcy is now in bookstores and available so you don’t need to wait to find it and see for yourself if you agree or disagree with my assessment.

Today is blog action day and the topic is water. About two thirds (2/3) of our planet is covered with water and yet many people do not have access to clean water. Of all the water on the planet only about one percent is fresh water than we can drink and we are continually polluting that water. [Note: These numbers and figures differ slightly depending on which authority you get the numbers from — I picked conservative numbers.]

Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Many of today’s blogs will probably deal with the facts and figures of water, water contamination, pollution, and the need for clean water. I’m going to talk about me — after all this is my blog.

Before we moved to our present house, my husband and I lived in cities and water was no problem — it was just there unless the water main broke. Water to drink. Water to cook with. Water to wash with. Water to flush toilets. Water for house plants. It was just there. In some places it didn’t taste quite right so we got a Britta filter — problem solved.

Then fast forward to our present house and we have a well. Our house sits on 5 acres with its own well and septic system. Now we had to think about water and sewage. We have to be careful what we flush down the toilet because it’s going to go through the septic system and back out into the groundwater — hopefully clean again. If you put the wrong stuff in, the system may not work and that’s an expensive proposition of pumping it out, and so on.

But drinking water hasn’t been a problem. The well is deep and the water has been tested and is safe to drink. There’s an electric pump that brings the water up from that deep well and into the house. No electricity means no water.

A few years back, a hurricane knocked out the power and we were without water for over a week. No pump, no water. Earlier that year we’d bought a rain barrel which sat under a drain pipe from the roof. We’d been using that water to water the garden so we wouldn’t be stressing the well. With no electricity, we could use that water to flush the toilet but it wasn’t drinkable. We had to travel and buy water at stores; an expensive proposition when you needed water for everything — drinking, cooking, washing dishes, washing us.

That experience really made us appreciate just how reliant we were on technology. I remembered staying at a camp when I was a kid that had a hand-pump to bring water into the kitchen sink. But, electric pumps have replaced that in our lives and now without electricity we’re without many of the basics we take for granted — one of which is water.

Now, think about the many people living on this planet who can’t buy clean water. People who need to collect water from rivers, streams, rain barrels and then take their chances drinking it that it won’t make them sick — or kill them. We’re not talking fancy smart waters or flavored waters — just plain clean, disease and parasite free, water. 42000 people die each week from drinking unclean water. Think about that — that’s twenty times the population of the little town I grew up in in Maine. That’s every week just because they lack clean drinkable water.

Humans need water to survive. I’ve heard, but haven’t verified, that you can survive longer without food than you can without water. Yet, we treat our planet as if all its resources are infinite. They are not. While water is in many ways renewable because it can be treated, filtered by the ground, evaporated and returned via rain, it’s not a perfect system in the face of humanities every increasing abuse of our planet and its resources.

In my family we do what we can to help. We use rain barrels and recaptured water for gardening. We try not to buy bottled water and instead use our own water in reusable water bottles whenever possible. When we do buy, we try to buy where some of the money goes toward clean water programs. We try to put our efforts and money into programs and actions that will help everyone sharing the planet with us.

We’re all on this planet together and it’s about time we all spent a bit of time thinking about how we use it and how we can help others to have the basic necessities of life and the most basic of these is clean drinking water.

Mr. Darcy’s Obsession by Abigail Reynolds. Sourcebooks Landmark, ISBN: 978-1-4022-4092-8. Pages: 346. Published: October 2010. List Price: $14.99 (Amazon: $10.19 / Kindle: $9.68). Cover images ©Bridgeman Art Library; NinaMalyna / Fotolia.com.

Mr. Darcy’s Obsession by Abigail Reynolds is definitely a What if story.  The divergence point for this what if story occurs when Elizabeth Bennet is visiting Charlotte near Rosings.  Elizabeth receives word that her father is very ill before Mr. Darcy gets a chance to give his horrendously inept proposal.  She rushes home and not long after Mr. Bennet dies, Mr. Collins takes possession of Longbourn. Elizabeth is now out of reach and Mr. Bingley never gets a second chance with Jane Bennet.

Months have passed and Mr. Darcy has not forgotten Elizabeth. Bingley opted to bury his disappointment in work and left London to become actively involved in his businesses.  While visiting Darcy, Bingley tells him that he met Elizabeth Bennet near Kew Gardens.  He goes further and tells Darcy that she’s living with her aunt and uncle in Cheapside caring for their children and that Jane married a milliner shortly before her father died and the rest of the family are living with Mrs. Bennet’s sister in her apartment.

After Bingley leaves, Darcy can’t forget that Elizabeth is in London and he determines to see her – at least from a distance.  Well, a distance isn’t good enough and soon with the help of a street urchin in the neighborhood that he hires to spy for him, he manages to meet her on her daily walk and resume their acquaintance. On these walks he learns that while time may have past, his heart is as much taken with her as it ever was.

Of course, nothing is going to go smoothly because while the characters are the same, Elizabeth Bennet’s situation is more reduced now than it was when they first met.  Darcy begins to realize that just because someone is born into privilege and wealth doesn’t necessarily make them worth knowing.  He begins to truly see the behavior of his family as they inform him who Georgianna will marry with no consideration for her feelings or well-being.  Finally, he begins to evaluate his own beliefs and assumptions about class and realizes that the person, not the rank, is what is important.  It’s not an easy change for him and essentially this conversion runs throughout the book as a secondary plot thread — though truth to be told, without this thread Darcy would have to walk away from all that he loves and holds dear.

Meanwhile the story, because of the changes caused by the divergence from the original Pride and Prejudice, follows along with the same major plot points occurring with minor variations. The changed circumstances of Elizabeth and her family members and Jane’s marriage mean that there are other social obligations and entanglements. These are dealt with in a manner that makes the story flow smoothly and, more importantly, believably from the divergence point to the ending without seeming forced.

Darcy isn’t the only one questioning his beliefs and his assumptions.  Bingley also has changed as he’s lost Jane and it’s only in losing any hope of marriage to her that he realizes that he’s often followed the advice of others rather than trusting his own heart. Bingley also sees his level of society with a more critical eye and doesn’t like what’s revealed. As for Elizabeth, she has found a strength to maintain her dignity, humor, and concern for other even though she’s had to do things that she’d never been brought up to do.

Reynolds maintains the inner integrity of the Austen characters.  You may find the characters in changed circumstances but you’ll recognize them.  They act pretty much as you expect with the givens of the new situation in which they find themselves. There are no modern sensibilities imposed on them, they are as you’d expect them to be.  Reynolds has given us an excellent retelling of the tale with this single divergence point playing out to its inevitable conclusion.

Don’t hesitate to purchase Mr. Darcy’s Obsession, Reynolds has managed to remain true to atmosphere and language of the original work while taking a path that Austen didn’t.  While not in the Gothic tradition, Mr. Darcy’s Obsession has much of the dark broodiness and biting criticism of a Gothic but lightened with humor and hope — making it a satisfying and compelling novel that you’ll wish to read over and over again.

Managed to figure out what was wrong with the car to keep it from starting … water in the gas line.

However, that meant that I didn’t get my reviews all done for SFRevu so I’ve got to do them tomorrow. We did go live with the October issue but I’ll be adding more of my stuff tomorrow and did manage to proof a few more things today to go into the issue.

Monday the “official” announcements will go out but if you get a chance check out October but stay in touch because we’ll be covering ComicCon in New York this month with updates from our reporters attending the event.

Mr. Darcy’s Little Sister by C. Allyn Pierson. Sourcebooks Landmark. ISBN: 978-1-4022-4038-6. 448 pages. Trade Paperback. List $14.99 (Amazon: $10.19 / Kindle: $9.99) Previously published in 2008 as And This Our Life.

Darcy and Elizabeth are married and settling into their life together. Georgianna is elated to finally have a sister to talk to and confide in. However, Georgianna’s coming out this season and she’s nervous, terrified, and feeling very insecure. Like any seventeen-year-old, she acts out by snapping at people – in other words not being as polite as possible — which has everyone concerned as she’s normally so compliant.

C. Allyn Pierson’s Georgianna is complex and multifaceted. Told from Georgianna’s point of view, Mr. Darcy’s Little Sister gives us a chance to actually get to know Georgianna who had so small a part in Pride and Prejudice. She’s shy, unsure of her judgment after her misstep with Wickham, sick of being treated as a child, yet afraid to stand up for herself. On the other hand, Georgianna is intelligent and often underestimated by those around her which leaves a lot of room for an author to build a story.

It is expected that young girls will be engaged by the end of their first season and if not then certainly by the end of the second. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a teenage girl. Many of the young men in society are always short of money and Georgianna has 30,000 pounds to bring to a marriage. She knows that she’ll need to be very aware that many of the young men who will court her will be only interested in her dowry. To identify those who care more for her than her money will be a skill she’ll have to learn to develop and quickly.

What only Georgianna knows is that she’s already decided who she wants to marry, she just needs him to see her as an adult and realize that now is the time to act. In the process of helping Georgianna, Elizabeth also is trained to be presented at court. She and Darcy hope that Elizabeth sharing the training will help Georgianna, and being presented at court might help Elizabeth’s standing with the ton since Lady Catherine has not been reticent in her opinion of Elizabeth.

There are also several side plots that are set in motion and people go off to adventures that are not detailed in this book; hopefully they’ll be covered in later works by Pierson. For example, Mr. Darcy is sent to France by the King to retrieve some embarrassing items and Col. Fitzwilliam is helping uncover a group that is selling arms to France. Each of these tales would make interesting reading.

Eventually, all the various threads come together in a satisfying conclusion that leaves us believing that this is the Georgianna that Miss Austen meant us to get to know. Mr. Darcy’s Little Sister is an excellent addition to the growing list of Pride and Prejudice follow-ons.

Darcy’s Voyage: A Tale of Uncharted Love on the Open Seas by Kara Louise. Sourcebooks Landmark. ISBN: 978-1-4022-4102-4. 512 pages. Trade Paperback. List: $14.99 (Amazon:  $10.19 / Kindle: $9.68). Previously published as Pemberly’s Promise in 2007).

Kara Louise has written a beautifully retold Pride and Prejudice beginning with Darcy and Elizabeth meeting when she was returning home to Longbourn by Post and Darcy, whose coach had a mechanical problem, was forced to take the Post to the first stop and there change to another carriage that was being sent from Pemberly.  Darcy of course immediately made a less than desirable impression when he nearly knocked her down as he raced to the carriage door.  He apologized and actually tried to make conversation — surprisingly they found literature a topic on which to converse and challenge each other and the two hour ride passed pleasantly.  They never learned each other’s name but remembered fondly the other person long after the event.

Fast forward two years and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner and their children have traveled to America for Mr. Gardiner’s business.  They write and invite Elizabeth to join them in New York City to help with the children and enjoy the sights.  Elizabeth is excited to have the opportunity to travel and looks forward to the trip.  Mr. Darcy on the other hand doesn’t look forward to his trip to America where he’ll join Georgianna in New York City and bring her home from where she’s been visiting with Mrs. Annesley’s and her family.  Naturally, they are sailing on the same ship, Pemberly’s Promise (and I’m sure clever readers will realize just who owns the ship based solely on its name).

While Darcy tries desperately to remain aloof, the single women on the ship are speaking to him without introduction – all except Elizabeth Bennet.  He notices that she walks the deck early every morning and soon joins her.  Eventually, they begin to converse and find that they both look forward to their daily conversations.  It’s from Elizabeth that Darcy learns about the illness among the steerage passengers.  Her walks are the only breaks she takes from caring for her fellow passengers.

Elizabeth becomes seriously ill and Darcy knows he has the only empty bed on board.  The only solution is to be married by Captain Wendell and then annul the marriage when he returns to England.  It’s the only way to ensure her reputation remains intact.  He gives his pledge that it will be a purely platonic relationship. Elizabeth reluctantly agrees, as does the captain.  However, sometime during the voyage they fall in love, only they don’t realize it.  Separated on docking in New York and not knowing where Elizabeth lives, Darcy has no way to find her until he returns to England.

With this alternative beginning, Louise manages to maintain the emotional appeal and tone of the original Pride and Prejudice.   There are a few events from the original story line that take place earlier but once Bingley leases Netherfield, the original story is on track, except for a few key elements, and the story unfolds much as it did originally.

In other variations,  the variation causes such divergence from the original storyline that the author ends up having existing characters doing very uncharacteristic things in order to force events to unfold as expected.  Louise, on the other hand, manages to seamlessly weave this new relationship into the original story line by not forcing things to play out exactly as they did in Pride and Prejudice but as they would if this variation had occurred.

You’ll find some of our favorite scenes and dialogue included, but some of the dialogue may be uttered in similar, but different, circumstances and by other characters. I found it amusing to hear the same lines from someone else’s mouth but it didn’t take away from the story or my enjoyment.

This variation was a pleasure to read.  Louise honors the characters and the story of Pride and Prejudice and yet makes it new, exciting, and just as endearing. I highly recommend Darcy’s Voyage if you enjoy variations of the theme of Pride and Prejudice. I’d also mention that this book is appropriate for all ages.

It was a beautiful day in our neighborhood today — engines being revved as someone worked on it, the birds in the trees, and some strange cracking and breaking of branches in the woods.  We had to get up early for an appointment, but then spent most of the day on the deck with the cat, just enjoying the chance to be outdoors while it wasn’t hot enough to melt one’s body or cold enough to freeze.

But listening to the sounds of nature, I realized that woodpeckers and sewing machines have the same sort of sound.  A rapid buzz or series of taps and stop.  Repeat indefinitely.  For the sewer it’s to reposition the fabric and continue — especially when sewing short seams like in a quilt.  I’d imagine the woodpecker gets a headache from banging about on the trees trying to impress the females with his drumming.

Then the cat took a lot of naps.  At one point he stretched out to about twice his usual size and twisted his upper body to the east and the lower to the west as he laid on his back.  Cats must have the best backs of the universe.  I envy him his ability to twist about and not feel pain.  Sigh…if only humans had it so good.

We never figured out what animal was crashing about in the woods.  Usually when it’s deer you can see them as they move through the trees, but not today.  We’ve seen turkey, quail, possum, and hedgehogs but today it was just noises.

Picked more tomatoes from the garden and the butternut squash (since the vine was dead).  Lots more tomatoes ripening.  This was also a pretty good year for the garden.