A Curious Statistical Anomaly

I’d been having Just Jane by Nancy Moser popping up on my recommendations on Amazon for quite a while and saw it on sale at Sam’s Club and thought what the heck might as well give it a try. Besides the reviews on Amazon when I checked it out seemed mainly positive.

As a novel of the life of Jane Austen, Just Jane covers the facts of her life adequately. Told from the point of view of Jane, you’d expect the same wittiness that Austen was known for but in that regard it never quite gets up to what I expected. However, the author, as it turns out, didn’t expect to write to the voice of Austen just the facts of Austen. Having recently read, Cassandra and Jane: A Jane Austen Novel by Jill Pitkeathley, I found Just Jane to be much kinder to Cassandra and much more clinical in the laying out of Austen’s life story.

As a narrative of the life of Jane Austen, Just Jane works and works well. It covers all the highlights of the family, their inter-relationships, visits, births, deaths, marriages, moves, the books and their publication. It just never got me to make an emotional attachment to Jane Austen. This was surprising because in many ways Jane Austen was a precursor to the modern woman. She was a woman who chafed at not being able to control her own life, manage her own monetary affairs or even control her publications without a male taking part in the business of publishing. However, with the support and encouragement of her family, she wrote books that are still in print and revered today for her incisive portrayal of her society. Jane Austen was a clear eyed observer of what went on around her. She studied people and herself and managed to give her readers a look at what life was like for people in that strata of society. The fact that they were also in many ways love stories with the female characters getting married at the end didn’t hurt either.

While Moser does an admirable job of presenting the factual time line as a fictional narrative, it lacks the passion and emotional impact that I would have liked to have read for a fictionalized biography of the author. So while it didn’t really tell me any more than I already knew, or make me feel like I understood Jane Austen any better, it was an interesting and factual account of her life as we know it from Austen’s letters and writings.

I’m not going to comment on the religious overtones of the characterization of Jane Austen because I have no real way to know how she acted around others during her lifetime. However, I do feel that, based on the times, that she wouldn’t feel the need to resort to telling people she was going to pray for them or the Lord would take care and so on and so on. Why? Because at that time religion was such an integral part of life that it would go without saying that prayers would be said for those in need. As the daughter and sister of ministers, Austen’s life was steeped in religion and the church and it would “just” be and not need mentioning. I think it’s fairly common now-a-days to point out how religious one is in order to show just how important religion is to their life — actions speak louder than words and always have. It would be unnecessary to continually harp on the religious nature of Austen’s life because her actions in visiting the poor, helping her neighbors, traveling miles to be with a friend who is caring for an ill relative — give the same information via the acts. Since the actions are in the story, the words are unnecessary and without the actions they are not to be believed.

All in all, an interesting fictionalized biography of Jane Austen. However, Cassandra and Jane has more of an emotional undercurrent that infuses the incidents with emotional as well as factual weight while Just Jane remains at arm’s length. I’m not sorry I read Just Jane, and I’d recommend it for someone looking for a fictional biography. I just feel that it could have been better, especially since it is told from Jane Austen’s point of view, if it had approached Austen’s wit and cleverness.

We went live with the magazines at midnight on September 1st, but we just finished all the tweaks and polishing of the chrome this evening.  The major problem this month was me.  Yup, me.

I got the flu or a cold but it might be the flu.  Yes, I googled the symptoms and I’ve got all of them so I don’t know what I’ve got.  So, I’ve been dragging around for a couple of weeks barely getting out of my own way and trying to do the things that absolutely had to be done and smoothing over the rest.  That means I OCR documents, put the pages together and proofed  them.  Entered and proofed reviews that were sent to me.  Stared at the screen for inordinate amounts of time but didn’t add a line to my novel.  Sent out the announcement of the finalists for the WSFA Small Press Award. I answered some email and entered books.

And I read.  I don’t know what most people do but when I don’t feel good I read.   I read nearly everything I was assigned this month and then some.  The problem is that, feeling as crappy as I did — I didn’t write the reviews immediately but waited.  I thought, silly me, that I’d write them the last three days of the month since I’d already taken notes and stuck stickies in the books to remind me of things I could do that.  Except I then got laryngitis and Hyperion got sick and several people who normally don’t wait to the last minute did and ….

Well, I ended up adding new material on September 1st and 2nd.  So, now we’re really done with the zines and so, if you already checked it out — check again — there may be new stuff because I combed my email today for everything I missed and now–deep sigh,  it’s time to start all over again for the October issue.

Speaking of upcoming events, I’m hoping to get an interview with Monica Fairview the author of The Other Mr. Darcy in October.  She’s doing a blog tour and I’m hoping she’ll be able to squeeze it in between stops.  I’ve got the list of the blogs she’ll be visiting and will post it closer to the start of her tour and just before I post my review of the book.

Gumshoe is going to be running an interview with Laura Childs in October to go with the release of her new book, Tragic Magic (A Scrapbooking Mystery).  I’ll also be reviewing season one of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

On the SFRevu side, I need to see what books we’re reviewing for October and start contacting people to line up an interview.  The problem is usually not that there aren’t enough people to ask but that I dither on trying to decide who to ask because I want to ask them all.

Then there’s the knitting.  I’ve got a pair of socks on the needles and the first one is nearly to the heel.  I’ve got a sweater that needs to be steam pressed and hemmed and a button added.  And, I’ve got two other started sweaters that I hope to finish this fall.  Then there’s the spinning of yarn that I need to do.  I’d hoped to get some spinning done by requesting an audio book for review but when it arrived it was print–no problem but I was looking forward to the listening time.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to get my act together to get geared up for Capclave 2010. I’m really excited about the opportunity to be a convention chair and hope that the convention will turn out to be one that everyone enjoys from the Guests of Honor to the Volunteers to the attendees.

Looking this over, I think I may be over-committed…nah…it will be fun.

Marsha Altman was gracious enough to make A Curious Statistical Anomaly a stop on her Blog Tour and talk about her newest book, The Plight of the Darcy Brothers. We’ll be giving away 1 set of Marsha’s two books: The Darcy’s and the Bingleys and The Plight of the Darcy Brothers (must have a mailing address in the US or Canada). I will pick a random person who as posted a comment on this blog post as the winner. Winner will be chosen on August 19th.

I’m the author of The Plight of the Darcy Brothers, a sequel to The Darcys and the Bingleys, which is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice. And it is a series; book 3 (Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape) is due out in Feb 2010. Gayle asked me to talk about the problems of remaining true to the original characters once I’m beyond the scope of the original Austen book, and in book 2, about four years have passed since the wedding, other people are married too, and there are kids. I would say I’m pretty past the scope.

The real answer, as I see it, is that there is no way to remain true to the original characters because there is no one set of “original characters.” Every person who reads Pride and Prejudice comes away with a different impression of how the characters acted and how they would like them to act in a sequel. I have my own interpretation; at times it’s wild and at times it’s pretty straightforward. As an author, my job is to make it presentable, so even if the reader doesn’t agree with it, the reader is at least willing to accept it.

A prime example is the first book, which got a lot of criticism for having Darcy be a lush and therefore the butt of several jokes while in college. I didn’t think making Darcy a lush was at all negative to his character. You work up a tolerance for alcohol by drinking a lot, and Regency gentlemen drank more than a lot. The idea that Darcy has a lower tolerance means that he is very conservative in his alcohol consumption, perhaps fearing that a slovenly image would harm his family name (which is so clearly important to him in Austen’s work), and as a result he doesn’t have much of a tolerance compared to his peers, so when he does drink, he gets very drunk quickly. Since Darcy lives on his high horse, his college friends (and Wickham, of course) take any advantage they can get to knock him off it. In other words, he’s so virtuous that people enjoy seeing him knocked down a peg, albeit in a friendly way. I felt it was an amusing way to soften Darcy, but some readers didn’t agree, as Darcy is not supposed to be ridiculous. I can see their point, but it’s the story I wanted to write, so I wrote it.

Much less controversial methods of maintaining a tone involve simply expanding a character, keeping the old ideas in place but implying there are other facets of a character’s personality we haven’t seen before. Bingley is still overly sweet and has bad handwriting, and knows his judgment when it comes to assessing relationships can be flawed, something he learned in Pride and Prejudice, which is why he went to Darcy for help vetting Caroline Bingley’s suitor in my first book. On the other hand I felt no need to make him a complete idiot. His father was massively successful in trade, so Bingley is good with numbers and languages. He’s not experienced running an estate but he’s a fast learner. Caroline and Louisa show the same qualities; Caroline’s knowledge of Italian was what put her so constantly in Dr. Maddox’s presence that she married him. In Pride and Prejudice, Caroline Bingley was a snob, obsessed with fashion, stature, and putting other people down. Adding intelligence doesn’t contradict that. Even after she marries someone arguably below her station (though he was born well above her station), she maintains a certain edge absent in Jane and even Elizabeth. The important thing is that it isn’t directed at her husband and doesn’t bother him, and being married and settled predictably makes her a bit softer, as most of her cattiness in Austen’s work was due to trying to woo Darcy and shun Elizabeth, something she no longer has to do.

I’m supposed to end these guest blog posts with a question to start a discussion pertaining to my novel, but as this is the last stop on my blog tour, so I’ll ask this instead: Chicken or fish?

About the Author

Marsha Altman is a historian specializing in Rabbinic literature in late antiquity, and an author. She is also an expert on Jane Austen sequels, having read nearly every single one that’s been written, whether published or unpublished. She has worked in the publishing industry with a literary agency and is writing a series continuing the story of the Darcys and the Bingleys. She lives in New York.

Mr. Darcy, Vampyre starts on the morning of the wedding of Elizabeth and Jane to Darcy and Bingley. Austen always married her heroines off and ends with the wedding or the wedding on the horizon. I imagine that she wanted us all to dream of their happily ever afters. Austen had enough couples around her to know that not all matches ended in happiness — so she never went beyond the joyful anticipation of the wedding.

Jane and Elizabeth are nervous and ecstatically happy to be marrying men they love — that these men are also rich adds to the joy of the day. Immediately after the service Darcy and Elizabeth are to tour the Lake District. But once in the carriage, Darcy reveals that he has changed their plans and they are going to Paris. Elizabeth is surprised but not against the plan. However, as the days pass, she become uneasy as Darcy seems to be struggling with some inner turmoil. Even more troubling to Elizabeth is that he hasn’t yet come to her room. She fears that he’s regretting the match.

It’s hard to discuss Mr. Darcy, Vampyre — or even read it — without being reminded of Bran Stoker’s Dracula; though the author said she was more influenced by Dr. Polidori’s The Vampyre. Jonathan Harker kept a journal. It was the pages of his journal that let the reader and his dear Mina vicariously experience the terror of his ordeal. These journal entries, as well as the more familiar narrative and newspaper reports,  give Dracula an  immediacy and a sense of reality to unrealistic events. In Mr. Darcy, Vampyre, Elizabeth writes letters to Jane trying in her own way to share her fears and misgivings about her marriage, Darcy’s withdrawn nature, and their erratic travels, and the people that they meet.

Darcy moves them from Paris to visit a relative he wants to consult with. They travel through the Alps and beyond where people greet the carriage by hastily crossing themselves. There’s more journeys to Venice and then Italy. Elizabeth is sure that something more is going on than what she sees or hears, but she’s unsure what it means or what to do. Phrases that don’t make sense. Lady Catherine showing up to fight with Darcy over his marriage. No matter how much she begs Darcy to talk to her he demurs and puts her off.

Elizabeth is such a strong character in Pride and Prejudice that her confusion and insecurity is cause for alarm in the reader. The parallels with Stoker’s Dracula echo throughout the narrative — subtle but enough to cue readers into what’s going on even if the title has been Mr. Darcy and his Bride. The book is dedicated to Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey, but Elizabeth is no Catherine lost to her imagination and waiting to be rescued. Elizabeth’s “courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate” her. She stands up for herself making some difficult decisions. She doesn’t wait to be rescued she takes matters into her own hands.

Grange deviates significantly from the traditional tropes of vampire fiction. While the differences are significant there are other authors who have used some of these same deviations so a fan of vampire fiction would not scoff at the books –at least not until they read the ending. However, fans of Pride and Prejudice, with some exceptions, will be willing to forgive the deus ex machine ending simply because it allows of our favorite literary couples to continue their journey.

This is not a spoof of Gothic literature but a true melding of vampire fiction with a Pride and Prejudice follow on story. If you’re a Austen purists you probably won’t pick the book up anyway, but if you enjoy taking a chance on something a bit different, I think you’ll find the Darcy and Elizabeth of Pride and Prejudice working through some tough, and rather unexpected problems as they settle into their marriage.

The Plight of the Darcy Brothers begins several months after the ending of The Darcys & the Bingleys. Elizabeth has miscarried. She and Darcy are devastated but they have their son, Geoffrey, who is very much like his father, and they are assured that there will be more children.

Starting with such sadness, you’d expect this book to be much darker than its predecessor, but there is hope. Jane and Bingley live nearby and the visits are frequent. Elizabeth begins to come out of her depression. Even Mrs. Bennet surprises us with her common sense advice — who knew she had it in her.

Then a mysterious letter comes from Mary Bennet who has been studying in Paris, asking Jane to come to her in Brighton. It’s mysterious because it’s not like Mary to be so uninformative and secretive. Jane, of course, asks Elizabeth to come with her. When they arrive at the Fitzwilliams’ home, Mary isn’t there. They don’t know where she is staying or how to find her. But then Mary shows up and breaks her bad news. Jane and Elizabeth, while shocked to their core, immediately offer Mary all the assistance they can and the trio sets off for Chatton, Jane’s home.

The entire family gets involved and begins to come up with a plan to save Mary’s reputation. Someone must take charge and we all know that someone will be Darcy. He’d been looking for a way to help Elizabeth get over the loss of her child and the journey they must take would be the perfect opportunity. Also, it seems from Mrs. Reynolds that there is also some unfinished business of his father’s in France. Hopefully, they can handle it and Mary’s problem at the same time.

While The Darcys & the Bingleys, took us from the marriage at the end of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to the two couples settling down and adapting to married life, The Plight of the Darcy Brothers moves us into unknown territory. Many sequels to Pride and Prejudice move us beyond the wedding, Altman manages to do so by adding additional characters and by allowing the characters to grow and change in accordance with the events that have happened to them since the wedding. Yet, she is still working with the characters that we have grown to love — she doesn’t deviate from the integrity and moral values that Austen imbued them with in her work. However, they’ve moved on–grown. Kitty and Georgiana have become friends with the result that Kitty is more calm and responsible and Georgiana is less shy. Caroline Bingley has found happiness with Dr. Maddox and lives in London.

This story, while about Mary, has Mary only as the driving force of the plot and mostly off the page. It’s Darcy and Elizabeth that take center stage. They are trying to save Mary’s reputation and, by extension, Kitty’s. They make some new friends and find some unexpected allies and family along the way.

Altman manages to move between the story lines — Darcy and Elizabeth in Europe and Bingley and Jane and the rest of the Bennets in Chatton, and Caroline and Dr. Maddox in London — deftly. As with the first book there is humor, always apt, sometimes silly but always fitting to the occasion and circumstances and, if we’re honest, resonating with our own lives. There are also some moments of extreme poignancy that actually brought tears to my eyes (even on rereading the book a second and then a third time).

Altman manages to stay true to the original characters, tell a whopping good story, make us laugh and cry in all the right places, and make us want to read it again and again. It’s that ability that makes her follow-ons to Pride and Prejudice, ones that we will impatiently await like the coming of a new season.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I’m a wicked (in the New England use of the term) fan of Jane Austen’s works and avidly read and review many of the the books written by others to continue the story of the characters that Austen breathed life into.

On August 1st, Sourcebooks is releasing The Plight of the Darcy Brothers: A tale of the Darcys & the Bingleys by Marsha Altman. I reviewed her first book, The Darcys & the Bingleys: A Tale of Two Gentlemen’s Marriages to Two Most Devoted Sisters earlier this year. I’ll be posting a review of this new book this weekend, but first I’ve got some exciting news — can you tell I’m trying to build up the excitement?

Marsha Altman is going to be doing a blog tour to talk about her book. This is the list of sites where she’ll be talking about The Plight of the Darcy Brothers: A tale of the Darcys & the Bingleys:

July 23: Jane Austen Today
July 24: Fresh Fiction
July 28 J. Kaye’s Book Blog
July 29: This Book For Free
July 30: Debbie’s World
July 31: Grace’s Book Blog
August 3: Jenny Loves to Read
August 4: Stephanie’s Written World
August 5: A Bibliophile’s Bookshelf
August 10: Everything Victorian
August 12: A Curious Statistical Anomaly

So, if you enjoy Jane Austen, her books, her characters, and the world she allows us to peer into, you might consider checking out Marsha Altman’s blog tour. Check out my review of her first book, then check back for my review of this new book. I’ve enjoyed her take on these wonderful characters and her ability to maintain their integrity and personality while allowing them to grow and change as they live their lives within her world.

[Hyperion:] Gayle’s being a bit understated again.  Look at the August 12th blog listing, then look up a the title of the one you’re currently reading.  Take a second … okay …  now do you see why she’s excited?

The second Mrs. Darcy of the title is Octavia Melbury Darcy, widow of Captain Christopher Darcy (a cousin of the Darcy of Pride & Prejudice). We open with Octavia entertaining a friend in Calcutta, Lady Brierley has stopped in to see if the rumors of Octavia being left with little to no money is true. Captain Darcy’s estate was entailed to a distant relative, George Warren, and Octavia is left with a very small income to live on. The upshot is that she’ll have to return to England and to the care of her half-sisters and half-brothers. We also quickly come to understand that these half-sisters/brothers care very little for Octavia since she’s from their father’s second marriage to a women they consider beneath them.  Therefore Octavia is nothing to them, but her name means that they must make some effort on her behalf or society will think less of them.

While wondering how she can afford to return to England, she is contacted by a gentleman working for the lawyers of a Mrs. Anne Worthington and told that Mrs. Worthington’s estate has been left to her.  Octavia is surprised to say the least and expects that this is all a mistake since, as far as Octavia knew, she had no relatives on her mother’s side of the family, or her Melbury relatives would have sent her off to them years ago. None the less, she is given money to travel to England and the name of the law firm to contact on her arrival.

We now have the set up for the story. Octavia must move in with her Melbury relatives who see her as someone to be ashamed of and married off again as soon as possible. She finds that the inheritance is indeed real and since her husband died before her great-aunt, there is no difficulty.  For if her husband had died after her great-aunt, the inheritance would have gone to him, and she’d be left again with nothing. So, until all the details are taken care of, Octavia must live with her half-sister and her husband and manage to avoid being married off.

Of course, being a novel of romance, action, and adventure, there will be plenty of twists and turns on the way to that “happily ever after” moment at that end of the book.

Elizabeth Aston has written several other books that follow on the Darcy family: Mr. Darcy’s Daughters, The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy, The True Darcy Spirit, The Darcy Connection, and Mr. Darcy’s Dream.

I’ve read and reviewed several of these books. Aston deals mainly with the next generation of characters. The children of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, Jane and Charles Bingley, Charlotte and Mr. Collins (somehow it just doesn’t seem right for him to have a first name). In this case, Octavia was married to a distant Darcy cousin but, once back in England, she meets Camilla Darcy Wytton and her husband; Camilla is one of the five daughters of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy. George Warren, who inherits Christopher’s estate is the stepson of Caroline Bingley. Connections within connections.

Aston manages to tell a story that pulls in the various characters from the next generation that has peopled her previous novels. She also adds other new characters and within the confines of the period — its politics and social mores — gives us not only an entertaining and interesting story, but a window onto a the world as it once was.

I find Aston’s books fascinating not only for their connection with the Jane Austen canon but because by going for the next generation, she places her stories at the beginning of the modern era when women were just beginning to realize that they could have options to marriage. However money, as always, was the driving force and a woman without her own funds had few options unless she married — thus the bases for so many romances in this period. Marriage was more often than not a contractual agreement; women, while dreaming of marring for love, in fact often — as did Charlotte Lucas — marry in order to protect themselves and their futures to whoever asked and seemed least likely to abuse them.

There’s a dark background to many of these books, more present in their absence from the actual story line.  Our main character in this story is faced with the very real prospect of being force to marry in order to survive in her social circle, since at her level she can’t be seen to find employment. There were very few employment options for women of class other than governess or companion at that time. Octavia, without funds of her own, is totally at the mercy of her relatives, who don’t particularly care for her. Things were even worse for women of the lower classes, but those stories would be grittier and much less likely to have happy endings.

While each of these books stands alone, the characters from one often show up in the other stories, so reading them in publication order would give the reader a better grounding in this new generation. Personally, I’ve been reading them as I find them — out of order — I haven’t had any problem following the main plot lines. I may miss out on the intricacies of the various relationships, but it doesn’t take away from the enjoyment.

Right up front, I’ll admit that I’m a Jane Austen fan and I love searching for those books that continue the saga of the people from Austen’s novels.

The Darcys & the Bingleys continues the story begun in Pride and Prejudice. The book opens with the two couples engaged and deep in planning for their weddings, then we have the weddings, honeymoons, and the two couples settle into their married lives. Altman, knowing that this material would be a bit thin on the ground for a full novel, is actually telling us the tale of Caroline Bingley.

As those who are familiar with Pride and Prejudice are aware, Caroline Bingley has been pursuing Mr. Darcy in the hope of being Mrs. Darcy. She hoped that with her brother being Darcy’s close friend and that her being with them would make his heart grow fonder of her and offer marriage. That didn’t happen, instead Charles Bingley married Jane Bennett and Darcy married Elizabeth Bennett. Now Caroline is nearing thirty, which at that time meant she was unlikely to get a good offer of marriage, and her age was against her. She was desperate and, returning to London after the weddings, she threw herself into the social scene hoping to find a good match.

Luckily for Caroline, she does find someone who offers for her hand. Charles is called to London to meet her suitor and to give his consent. It’s at this point that the book really takes off (not that the preceding scenes of the happy couples settling into their new lives wasn’t interesting). Needless to say, Bingley and Darcy find it necessary to vet Caroline’s suitor. In the process they learn more information about the suitor, about Caroline’s life, and the Bingley children’s childhood.

Altman writes with true sensitivity to the characters as developed by Jane Austen. Never does she violate the moral code or core characterizations of any of the characters. However, Altman does allow them to grow and change with the changing relationships that result as daughters marry, women become mothers, and men become husbands and fathers, and as the new relationships by marriage settle in place. I never felt that she twisted the characters core values and attributes, but she did give them strength and growth. Jane gains a spine. Darcy and Bingley become more like brothers than close friends. Jane and Elizabeth gain confidence and find that their sisterhood becomes even more precious to them. Many things change, but at heart it all grows out of Austen’s original story.

I must mention that Altman manages to tell a taut tale while following the template laid down in the original story, being true to the times while striking out into her own territory. That she manages to do this while also injecting a bit of humor, lively wit, crisp dialogue, and outstanding adventure with a few twists and turns makes the book even more exciting.

I’ve read a number of continuation tales where the authors chose to make the plot move by having the main characters complete change their character, morals, and values. So authors who manage to continue the story while maintaining what we readers loved so much about the original characters, while telling new stories, are to be commended and recommended. Give Altman’s The Darcys and the Bingleys a try, especially if you’ve been disappointed by other continuations — I believe you’ll agree this is an excellent addition to the continuation tales.