A Curious Statistical Anomaly

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.

A Contest: The Sourcebooks, the publisher of Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape, is willing to support a giveaway for the US and Canadian readers of this interview. Leave a comment on the post and I will chose a random comment author on Sunday February 7th. I’ll contact the winner to get their snail mail address. Winner will receive one set of three books in the Darcys and Bingleys series).

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. The books are a delight, continuing the lives of some of literature favorite characters Elizabeth Bennet Darcy and Fitzwilliam Darcy. One reviewer said that “that [these books] would please even Jane Austen.” The more I read about Austen’s wit and humor, the more I do believe that she would appreciate Marsha Altman’s continuation of the story.

It may be Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape but you gave the women a very big role this time. Just how much fun was it to pair up the unlikely duo of Elizabeth and Caroline?

Marsha: A lot of fun, but also a little tricky. Even though nine years have passed since the events of Pride and Prejudice, these women still haven’t completely warmed to each other. Elizabeth is still witty and stubborn, and Caroline has to retain a certain edge to her for her to remain Caroline Bingley, even if she’s now Caroline Maddox. It’s not my attempt to make these characters unrecognizable, even if they do evolve significantly as they go through milestones in their lives, particularly marriage and children. Nor was it appropriate to have them constantly sniping at each other, because their journey was very serious. So I had to find a kind of balance there. Darcy and Dr. Maddox actually have more time to bicker, because they have few ways to pass the time while they’re waiting to be rescued.

So much of this resonated with Bram Stoker’s Dracula only without the vampires but with all the Gothic scariness. There’s even a ninja. Did you intend such a homage? Or am I just seeing a connection you didn’t intend?

Marsha: Just a straight-out correction here: There are two vampires in this story. The book just never says it outright, but the hints are hidden in the details. They reappear in other literature I’ve written that’s not Pride and Prejudice related and is either going to be published soon or I’m hoping will sell later this year. And there are no ninjas, only samurai (book 8 has ninjas).

The homage is entirely intentional, but more for the reader than the characters. To them, Transylvania is a place they’ve never heard of and can’t locate on a map before this story begins, except within the context of Brian Maddox having mentioned it was in Austria somewhere in the previous book. Let’s remember that Dracula by Bram Stoker wasn’t published until 1897, and that book was the formation of the modern vampire legend and its association with Transylvania, whereas previously the legends about vampires were less centralized to a place and more nebulous. Vlad the Impaler, on whom Dracula the character is supposedly based, was actually from Wallachia, not Transylvania, and his legend wasn’t widespread until the book was published. So the name “Transylvania” wouldn’t strike instant fear into the hearts of people in 1812. It would be intimidating for being so far east, beyond the known and safe world of the European Continent even if it was technically part of the Austrian Empire at the time, because of its remoteness. The fear comes from leaving familiar Regency England and traveling into a dangerous backwater area, where the “other” is the real scare, not the supernatural.
Nonetheless I chose Transylvania because it has an instant connotation for my audience, and it does have a wealthy historical tradition of folklore to draw from in the scenes that use it. When you’re in a mysterious place, it’s an easy step to be drawn into the foreboding local tales that might surround it, so it’s a simple jump from “scary count who kills people” to “vampires, witches, and warlocks.”

I should remark that this isn’t totally fair to Romanian history. Transylvania had plenty of European, cosmopolitan nobles who had encountered the Enlightenment and were beyond this nonsense (there’s one in the book), but the villains are particularly backwards to heighten the experience.

It seems with each book that Mr. Darcy has to face some of his inner devils or at least learn to broaden his view of the world and the people in it. Do you enjoy tormenting him? Have you got much more torment in store for him?

Marsha: This is as bad as it ever gets for Darcy. Seriously, I let him off easy from here on. He’s better equipped to deal with strife that involves his family lineage in future books after his experiences in this book. This book was my attempt to stretch as far as I could my interpretation of Darcy. In many circles, there are two schools of thought to explain Darcy’s actions in Pride and Prejudice – either he made his mistakes because he was “proud” and then genuinely learned from his actions and changed his characters, or he was “shy” and misinterpreted, causing multiple misinterpretations on both ends that needed to get cleared up before the right people could get married. Austen provides fodder for both explanations: Mrs. Reynolds, on Elizabeth’s visit to Pemberley, goes out of her way to proclaim that her master has always been good and kind to everyone, and Darcy admits at Rosings that he’s not good in making easy conversation with strangers, leading to the “shy” interpretation. Then you have Darcy at the end saying that he was spoiled as a child and expected only the best, leading to the “proud” interpretation. I’ve always sided with “shy” because it makes Darcy a better man – he’s not a jerk who reformed so much as someone who made bad decisions and then corrected them.

Today we have a larger understanding of people who are uncomfortable around other people, myself being one of them, and don’t have an easy time making new friendships or retaining old ones. For people like this, parties full of strangers can feel like living hell. In extreme examples, you have Social Anxiety Disorder, where people can actually develop shortness of breath in the presence of too many people, and you have medication for it. I don’t believe that these problems didn’t exist in the past, they just weren’t acknowledged or understood. I am not, for the record, diagnosing Darcy with SAD (his symptoms don’t match), but pushed to the edge as he is in this book, the darker side of whatever makes him an unsocial person comes out in full force, and coupled with a genetic predisposition you have a serious problem on your hands that tests not just him but everyone around him. It’s a pretty radical interpretation of Darcy, but I like doing new things.

It appears that Gregoire may be learning to relax a bit. You’ve taken all the characters in new directions that wouldn’t have been expected just one book ago. But, it all feels so consistent with their growth. Can you tell us in some very general terms what we might have to look forward to in future volumes?

Marsha: G-d willing, this series will keep being published by my benevolent publisher Sourcebooks, and the next book will be mostly concerned with Grégoire, and his spiritual evolution after some events force him to return to England. Grégoire is like his half-sister Georgiana in that he believes in the good in everyone, but he’s a Darcy, so that makes him stubborn as hell about the way he wants to live his life, even if it seems in direct conflict with the way a modern person (in Regency terms) should live their life. In the fourth book you also have the emerging characters of the children. George Wickham (the third), Darcy’s half-nephew, is old enough to be in University, and Geoffrey Darcy is about to leave for Eton, and Georgiana Bingley is getting ready to enter society, so the shape of their characters as adults is starting to emerge, and the parents have to take a greater hand in trying to guide them into adulthood, where potential fortune or disaster awaits depending on their behavior. When they’re little kids, you can kind of let them run around and occasionally give them instruction, but the stakes become much higher much faster in their teenage years.

The fifth book, which a lot of my readers on the internet feel is the best book so far (nobody’s had a chance to weigh in on the last book and the Velociraptor-related ending), is the one where most of the children have entered society or are about to do so, and they become instrumental to the conflict and resolution in the story. There are still a lot of young kids running around, but the main cast of the next generation has emerged as players, sometimes to their parents’ disapproval. I didn’t want to write a series where BOOM! the kids are all adults trying to get married and the adults haven’t changed except that they have more gray hair and wear glasses. Books skip ahead a few years to key events, but the evolution is steady and somewhat mapped. Nobody ever stops evolving, because people are always growing, even in their later years.

What’s been the biggest surprise about response to your series?

Marsha: That people who have not read Pride and Prejudice have read it and enjoyed it. My parents re-watched the movie and that helped them out. I really should have included a summary of Pride and Prejudice in an introduction to the first book.

Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape—in stores February 2010

Hilarious and action-packed, this installment brings the Darcy and Bingley families to the year 1812 and the intrigues of the Napoleonic Wars. Darcy and Dr. Maddox go in search of Darcy’s missing half-brother and land in a medieval prison cell.

Much to his dismay, Charles Bingley is left to hold the fort at Pemberley while his sister Caroline, Elizabeth, and Col. Fitzwilliam traverse Europe on a daring rescue. Meanwhile, Lady Catherine de Bourgh kicks up a truly shocking scandal. One never knows what might happen next between the estates of Rosings and Pemberley.

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.

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.

Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775 and died in 1817.  She was 41 when she died.  During her life she wrote several novels that live in the hearts of her many readers.  The novels (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibilities, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Lady Susan) have been in print almost continuously.  I say almost because during her lifetime, she found it very difficult to get her novels published and she made very little money from them.

The books have been made into movies that either use the books as a base and then modernize the nearly out of recognition (Clueless) to the wonderful BBC productions.  I own most of the BBC and A&E movies and watch them often.  I also love the books and find that they have joined the other books on my comfort shelf for those times when I really need to visit with some dear and old friends — special books.

There are societies and clubs that have sprung up where those who enjoy her works can get together and discuss them in depth as well as the society that is depicted in the novels and other related topics.

You can find a brief biography of Jane Austen’s life on the website of the Jane Austen Society UK. This biography includes photos of some of the places where she lived.

The Republic of Pemberley has a wealth of information on Jane Austen, her life and times, and her works. Including the text of her major novels. I’ll warn you if you’re a fan of her works you can lose a lot of hours just dipping into the various areas of this website.

There have also been many books written that either continue the stories of Jane Austen’s characters or deal with the impact that her novels have had on readers. I’ve reviewed a number of these books (and movies) on this blog. You’ll find them if you scroll through the Reviews link at the top of the page.

So, celebrate Jane Austen’s birthday. Go read a book.

Postscript from Pemberly is book seven of the Pemberley Chronicles. Unfortunately, I haven’t read any of the previous six books. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did read the “look inside” of the first book a while back and put it on my wish list on Amazon; but with the height of my TBR pile…. But, when I got the chance to read Postscript from Pemberley, I wasn’t going to be stopped by the lack of prior book knowledge (and you shouldn’t either). The book, you see, has an appendix that lists the major characters and their family relationships. As you can probably imagine by the seventh book, we’re into cousin and grandchildren territory.

The main point of view character is Jessica Courtney. Jessica is the daughter of Rev. James Courtney and Emily Gardiner Courtney (the daughter of the Gardiners — Elizabeth’s and Jane’s Aunt and Uncle Gardiner). Jessica’s parents run the church and parish at Kympton. When the book opens we learn that Julian Darcy, the oldest son of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy, is having problems. His wife, Josie, has left him and their son to run off with a man who has promised to publish her book. We later learn that the book never got published, Josie got left on her own, and is very ill. Josie doesn’t recover and dies. Julian returns home to leave his son with his sister and her husband before going to France to continue his research.

All this is in the first few pages but it sets up the relationship that develops between Jessica and Julian as they become friends. Whether this relationship will develop into anything more is anyone’s guess as Julian is much older (Jessica is eighteen). Besides, Julian is headed to Paris for more study and Jessica is offered the chance to run the expanded and upgraded school on the grounds of Pemberley.

Mr. Darcy, ever concerned for the people that look to him for their livelihood, has decided that the current school at the church and at Pemberley is not educating the children for anything other than menial jobs and he wants to do better. Jessica is hired (and moves into Pemberley) to run the school and hire two additional teachers to develop a course of study that will better prepare the area’s children.

Thus we have at least two plot lines going. Actually there are several other plot threads in this volume. Will Jessica and Julian fall in love? Will they remain friends? Will the school work out? Will Jessica find qualified teachers? Will bringing two people in who have not been part of the previous books cause problems? What other family squabbles and events will occur to stir up the family.

What’s a novel without some conflict? Not very interesting, actually. Luckily for us, Rebecca Ann Collins knows that we need to have some conflict and some ambiguity in our reading and she provides it. Told mostly from Jessica’s point of view, we learn about the ups and downs of the now fairly large cast of characters. Jessica being the kindhearted person she is tends to be the one that her cousins turn to when they need advice or just to talk candidly without rumors spreading. Jessica listens, seldom judges, and knows how to keep secrets — especially her own. One interesting choice is that some of Jessica’s interior thoughts are told from snippets from her journal and from letters written to her and from her to others.

When a young lady with impeccable teaching credentials returns to live with her parents, Jessica finds not only an exceptional teacher for the school but a friend. However, Jessica is not the only person with secrets. Remember too that while we’ve reached 1866 — the times are not our own and in many ways the rules of behavior in that period of time make it difficult to understand the utter devastation that can be done to someone’s reputation for behavior that in our time wouldn’t even lift an eyebrow. Women were kept to a strict standard that most of us would rebel against with all our might today.

Postscript from Pemberley is fine addition to the growing list of Pride and Prejudice sequels. A marvelous book to curl up with on a rainy day with a hot cup of tea, to sink into a time and place so different from our own and visit people who seem so familiar. There’s no explosions or car chases, but there is tension and conflict and people we care about and hope will turn out happy at the end. It’s a book that when you finish you give a sigh of satisfaction and perhaps turn back to page one and start over.

Monica Fairview, author of The Other Mr Darcy, was gracious enough to answer a few questions allow me to share her answers. Her book was released on October 1st and is now in stores. I reviewed The Other Mr. Darcy on my blog last month on September 23rd.

Drawing:

I’ll be giving away one copy of The Other Mr. Darcy. The winner will be chosen from those who have commented on this post and live within the US or Canada. The winner will be chosen from those who comment on October 16th.

Interview with Monica Fairview:

What drew you to Caroline Bingley? She’s not a very sympathetic character in Pride and Prejudice and most follow on books center on the P&P main characters, what was it about Caroline that called to you to give her a chance at happiness?

I see Caroline as an underdog in Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth waltzes in and steals Mr. Darcy from right under her nose, and to add insult to injury, everyone gets to hate Caroline because she wanted Darcy in the first place. I kept thinking about Caroline and the kind of labels people attach to her such as “evil” and “witch” and other less polite terms, and my feminist instincts came to the fore. Why is Caroline the scapegoat in this story? She doesn’t do anything that Darcy doesn’t do. Darcy snubs Elizabeth and makes snide remarks about her family (“I’d sooner call her mother a wit,” he says), separates Bingley from Jane, and has plans to marry well. Caroline doesn’t do anything worse than that. Yet Darcy is forgiven, because he comes to love Elizabeth, but Caroline isn’t. There’s a much worse villain in Pride & Prejudice: Wickham. And yet you don’t hear people call him names.

So I wanted to give Caroline a voice. It’s as simple as that.

I was a bit surprised that Mr. Robert Darcy was American. It can be assumed that there are European D’Arcys, so why put a branch of the family in American?

I didn’t even think of the European D’Arcys because I was looking for a specific type of hero. Robert Darcy’s father left England because he was an odd person out. He couldn’t live with the expectations of being a gentleman. He was a businessman, and since engaging in trade wasn’t quite respectable, he needed to go elsewhere. Robert Darcy, too, is a sort of rebel. He does his own thing, even though as a Bostonian whose mother comes from a Brahmin background (though that word wasn’t used until later), he’s been raised very much like an English gentleman. So he’s capable of seeing two sides of the coin. Because of that, he can help Caroline see what’s wrong with her own lifestyle. Plus, he won’t look down on her for being in “trade.”

In addition, I have an underlying theme in the novel about “otherness” and how easily one can become alienated from society. Britain is at war with America at the time the novel takes place. Robert is caught behind enemy lines, so to speak, although the English at the time were more interested in the war with Napoleon than what was happening in the former colonies. But it forces him to examine his own identity. As a Darcy, he is part of the upper class in England. But as an American, he has supposedly moved away from such distinctions. It was fascinating to explore the contradictions inherent in the social systems. Through Robert I was able to look at the differences between the New World and the Old, and to explore the question of the newly established American identity of the time.

Because Robert is actually trying to define his own identity, his journey of self-awareness runs in a way parallel to Caroline’s, who also learns some hard lessons about her own role in society, both from a class perspective and as a woman.

One of the main problems of writing a follow on book from any of Jane Austen’s works, is “how true must I stay to the characters she developed as I bring them into a new adventure.” Did you feel that keeping the main character traits caused you any problems in moving in the direction you wanted to go? Did it cause any problems in your filling out Caroline’s growth and change?

Yes, it’s very hard – you do have to stay true to the characters. And you have to be very disciplined. I found it very restrictive, in some ways, but I also found I learned so much about the craft of writing from Jane Austen. She’s amazing, really, not only because of Darcy or Elizabeth but because she’s so very subtle. And then trying to adopt Jane Austen’s characters and move them into the new context was a huge challenge. I enjoyed it tremendously, though. Some Austenesque writers solve the problem of keeping the characters true by using actual quotes from P&P. I couldn’t do that, because I wasn’t presenting things from the same angle. I did use a lot from P&P to fill in Caroline’s background, but by the beginning of The Other Mr. Darcy Caroline had already changed in some ways. She’d been in love, and she’d been badly hurt. I was therefore able to have her stay true to her character, but at the same time I was able to show her as vulnerable, too, for two reasons: 1) because of the pain she went through and 2) because Robert Darcy has watched her fall to pieces, and she feels almost in his power.

I think when it comes to the other characters, the Bennets, for example, I’ve stayed as true to P&P as I could while at the same time putting them into different contexts. I studied the speech patterns of each of the characters very closely, and tried not to have them say anything that didn’t seem to fit. I’ve known P&P since I was about thirteen, and have read it so many times I have sections of it memorized. That definitely helped.

When not reading or researching the Regency period for your books, what type of books do you like to read — what are the last five books you read just for fun?

I noticed that you featured Connie Willis on your site. I just (re)read Passage, which I think is brilliant, though probably the word “fun” doesn’t apply here. I love her writings. I also love Cherryh’s Foreigner series, because I love the way she deals with cultural issues. For fun, to get out of the Regency world I seem to eat, drink and breathe, I read SF, especially by women writers, though I don’t read as much of it these days as I used to since it seems to have gravitated towards horror, which is not my genre, even though it’s enormously fashionable. I’ve been reading some British romantic comedy writers such as Julie Cohen’s Girl From Mars, Phillipa Ashley’s Decent Exposure, and Jill Mansell who is now being published by Sourcebooks. I read veraciously.

Most people are interested in writers and their lives, so what’s a typical writing day like for you?

I dream of something to write, then I wake up and start scribbling frantically onto bits of paper. Actually, not true, though sometimes that does happen. Not the dreaming part, but the bit where I wake up with a dialogue or scene in my head that I have to write down or I lose it. But otherwise, my working day is quite mundane. I usually turn on my computer when I wake up to give it a chance to do all the updates and come up with all the delays it possibly can, then do school drop-off. Next I procrastinate by checking e-mails, facebook, twitter, etc. When I have no more excuses left, I have to start writing. It’s really like any job, except it’s a lot more fun. I have to take into account my child’s schedule. I usually stay up late to write because that’s a quiet, peaceful time with fewer interruptions.

Has the reaction to The Other Mr. Darcy held any surprises for you? Anything you didn’t expect?

Not so far. I’m sure there will be some surprises, though. The Other Mr. Darcy is a bit different from many of the Austen-inspired novels out there.

Thanks for your time!

Thank you! I’m delighted to have had this chance to share my thoughts and books with you and your readers.

The Other Mr. Darcy—in stores October 2009!
Did you know that Mr. Darcy had an American cousin?!

In this highly original Pride and Prejudice sequel by British author Monica Fairview, Caroline Bingley is our heroine. Caroline is sincerely broken-hearted when Mr. Darcy marries Lizzy Bennet— that is, until she meets his charming and sympathetic American cousin…

Mr. Robert Darcy is as charming as Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy is proud, and he is stunned to find the beautiful Caroline weeping at his cousin’s wedding. Such depth of love, he thinks, is rare and precious. For him, it’s nearly love at first sight. But these British can be so haughty and off-putting. How can he let the young lady, who was understandably mortified to be discovered in such a vulnerable moment, know how much he feels for and sympathizes with her?

About the Author:
As a literature professor, Monica Fairview enjoyed teaching students to love reading. But after years of postponing the urge, she finally realized what she really wanted was to write books herself. She lived in Illinois, Los Angeles, Seattle, Texas, Colorado, Oregon and Boston as a student and professor, and now lives in London. To find out more, please visit http://www.monicafairview.co.uk/