“The room was dull now, and meaningless, with the young ladies gone from it. They were both lovely, almost luminous. And Sarah was, she knew, as she slipped along the servants’ corridor, and then up the stairs to the attic to hang her new dress on the rail, just one of the many shadows that ebbed and tugged at the edges of the light.” (53) It’s one thing to tell a new story with the basic plot of Austen’s novels, such as Bridget Jones’s Diary […]
Search Results for: Longbourn
“Things could change so entirely, in a heartbeat; the world could be made entirely anew, because someone was kind.”
I love Jane Austen. I know she’s not for everyone, but I definitely have a soft spot for the author. Due to this soft spot I limit what I partake of in the Austen companion materials, no matter how long they’ve been a part of the Austen experience. The one that seems to have the most is Pride and Prejudice. I read Mr. Darcy’s Diary for Cannonball Read IV, but that experience and reading less than stellar reviews has kept me from reading Death Comes […]
Jane Austen, meet Margaret Atwood.
Paging Jane Austen enthusiasts! Paging Jane Austen enthusiasts! This is pretty much the greatest Austen adaptation I’ve read–and I’m including Longbourn, which is the second-greatest Austen adaptation (and I’ll be honest–it was a close call. If you don’t like sci-fi or speculative fiction that much, you may give the preference to Longbourn, which is totally understandable. But you really don’t have to like sci-fi to enjoy this novel). I first heard of this book, because scootsa1000 read it and gave an excellent summary and review. […]
“It was a horrible time to be alive”
In her Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen, author Fay Weldon calls the Regency era “by our standards, a horrible time to be alive.” She also writes that the class society was “fair enough if you were Jane Austen, but supposing you were the maid?” That is what Jo Baker’s Longbourn does: supposes you were the maid. And it does the supposing brilliantly. For me, this was one of those books where the reading experience is so emotionally magnificent, it seems like a […]
The Bennets Are the MacGuffin
Longbourn by Jo Baker is proof that new work based in an homage can be so much more than the wish-fulfillment and bizarre tangents of fan fiction. A lot of literature provides alternate perspectives of a known works and Baker took Pride and Prejudice, a novel known so well by so many, and used it as a starting point for an interesting and compelling new story. The Bennets and their love lives are the MacGuffin to hang the narrative upon, but what Baker shows the […]
A book I ardently admire and love
It’s a universally-acknowledged truth around my house that a bit of Austen is a refreshing palate-cleanser. It’s been a few years since I read Pride and Prejudice, so I thought it high time for another visit with an old friend. Plus, I have cooked up this scheme for the next month: read Death Comes to Pemberley (especially since the adaptation is coming to Masterpiece!), Longbourn, and the Bridget Jones’s Diary set (I’ve read the first two and have finally overcome my reluctance to read the […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- Next Page »