I devoured this book in about a week, after I rediscovered the BBC miniseries version of “Pride and Prejudice,” which then made me wish for the hundredth time that there was some as-yet-undiscovered (to me) Jane Austen novel that I could read for the first time. (Not that all of her books are equally good… I think there are three good ones, and “Pride and Prejudice” is the best of the three.) But I found this, and thought, perfect! A way to experience the same story, but from a fresh angle…
And it was that, for the first half of the book I’d say. For the most part, the author does a great job of emulating Austen’s narrative voice, though there were a few formatting issues that confused me here and there (like the same character is speaking, but we’re on a new paragraph, and the previous paragraph’s quotations were closed, so it looked for all the world like somebody else is talking now.) It was fun to imagine what Darcy might have been thinking during the scenes leading up to his first proposal, and how Elizabeth’s behavior might have seemed to him then.
I think it was after that that the book really went downhill for me, mostly because Darcy then becomes a pining mess for Elizabeth. He literally doesn’t think about anything else. Which I guess is what we’d expect, since that’s the whole point of *this* book (his relationship with her)… but not only did I not buy that this stately, wealthy, distinguished man has nothing else going on in his life, I also ceased to respect him because of it–or I would have, if not for the fact that the character became so unbelievable that it pulled me out of the story. While Austin’s plots did revolve around romance and marriage, there was always more going on, too: peripheral relationships, amusing social depictions, and the like. Even so, I was invested enough that I finished the story, and it did get better once Elizabeth put him out of his misery and did agree to marry him after all.
My rating: ***1/2
Language: none
Sexual content: none
Violence: none
Political content: none
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