Random Jottings

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict - Laurie Viera Rigler

In 2009 I read and reviewed Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler which I enjoyed very much. Read my review here.  Now we have Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict, a parallel story line to the first book.

I do have reservations about the Jane Austen Prequel and Sequel Industry, but when the stories are as well done as these two are then I put them to one side. Laurie Viera Rigler's books are not reworkings of any of the Austen canon, rather two stories about Courtney and Jane who love Austen and find they have changed places. In the first story Courtney, from Los Angeles, wakes up and finds that she has been transported back into the time of Miss Austen and her bewilderment when she realises that she is stuck and cannot get back and her coming to terms with the mores and attitudes of the day make for amusing reading.  

In Rude Awakenings we have Jane waking up and finding that she is now living Courtney's Life in modern day USA complete with laptops, mobile phones, cars, trains and all the day to day technology which we all take for granted.   Apparently Courtney/Jane cracked her head in a swimming pool so all her friends think that her memory loss and strange way of speaking will disappear and she will be back to normal in no time. There is no sign of it happening and as she hasn't the faintest idea that she dumped her fiance just before she was due to be married (see review of earlier book) or that she has a job of work to go to, they take her along to a psychiatrist to see if anything can be done.

As with the first book, it is clear that both Courtney and Jane had unhappy dealings with their respective men in their lives and this seems to have triggered off the subconscious wish for something different, something better. I mentioned in my review of Confessions a meeting Courtney had with Jane Austen in Bath, in Awakenings Jane spots all the Austen books in Courtney's bookcase and is delighted that there are more to read as they had not yet been published in her other life. She spends happy days curled up reading them all totally oblivious to the fact that this odd machine is bleeping and ringing and decides to ignore it until her frantic friends turn up on the doorstep wanting to know what has happened to her and why she has not answered the phone or responded to their texts.

I am not going to give away the ending as the same dilemma arises in both books - do Courtney/Jane decide to stay where they are and seek happiness in their new lives or will they find a way back to their own time?   As with the first title, this was a hugely enjoyable read and though it was fun to find out what happened to Jane after reading Confessions,  I was left wondering at the end, which would be more difficult - Courtney going back in time and coping or Jane waking up in modern day America. 

What do you think?

Murder at Mansfield Park - Lynn Shepherd

Before I say anything about this book, I just want to say that I like Fanny Price.  I know most people find her an irritating prig but I do not.   Thrust into a family who don't want her in a house which is totally alien to her way of living, disliked and put upon by everyone, with the exception of Edmund, she manages to keep her true self through all trials and tribulations until her worth is finally realised.  She is a good person and, I suspect, goodness in a novel is boring.

So if you are one of the multitude who really dislike her then you are going to love this book as Fanny meets a sticky end. She is murdered.  Yes, shock horror!

The wittiest thing about Murder at Mansfield Park is the way the character's dispositions have been swapped around.  Far from being poor, despised and retiring Fanny is a rich heiress, queening it at Mansfield Park and positively sucked up to by Aunt Norris who wishes her to marry her son and gain her fortune.  In this book, her son is Edmund who is just as shy and boring as he is in Jane Austen's novel. I will admit here that I always want to shake Edmund for his sometimes wilful blindness to what goes on around him and wonder what Fanny sees in him.  Anyway, apart from Edmund's change of position, we find that Fanny has all the arrogance and conceit which JA gives to Maria Bertram;  her younger sister Julia is shy, retiring and put upon by Aunt Norris and is now Fanny;  she is very close to her brother, William who has just gone off to sea.  Tom Bertram seems essentially the same as in the original.

Now we come to the Crawfords.  I am well aware that Mary C has far more supporters and admirers than Fanny P and I sometimes wonder when reading Mansfield Park if Jane Austen secretly longed to marry her off to Edmund (she would certainly have gingered him up a bit), as she goes out of her way to make us like Mary.   There are many admirable things about her. She loves her brother, is kind to Fanny and befriends her, putting Aunt Norris in her place on one occasion, and I am never sure if she is as calculating as we are supposed to think she is.  Ditto Henry.   In Mansfield Park Revisited by Joan Aiken, Mary is now a dying heroine loved by all and we find that her brother Henry was more sinned against than sinning in his involvement with Mrs Rushworth.   In Murder at Mansfield Park Lynn Shepherd rehabilitates her even more thoroughly by making her clear thinking, affectionate, sensible and clear headed.  There is even a quote ascribed to Anne Eliot 'none so capable as Anne' in Persuasion which is reused here when speaking of Mary.

Henry has the misfortune to fall in love with Fanny and they elope and marry as she is tired of her engagement to Edmund and wishes to shock and upset her family who she despises.   Within days of this marriage Henry realises her true nature and knows he has made a dreadful mistake. She then disappears and nobody can find her until she turns up dead at the bottom of a ditch being dug at Mansfield Park where improvements are being undertaken.  So a 'thief finder' is called in to solve the mystery and we are introduced to Charles Maddox who sets about finding the murderer.   The rest of the book is taken up with his investigation and his relationships with the family and, in particular, with Mary who he finds fascinating and intelligent and he gradually falls in love with her. 

I guessed who the murderer was with very little difficulty by a process of elimination and getting rid of those suspects who I knew could not possibly be cast as the culprit and I daresay others will as well, but for me the main delight and enjoyment I took from this book was not the solving of the mystery, but the usage of the original story and characters who have been turned on their heads.  I found this engaging, witty and amusing and great fun.   Lynn Shepherd has the right turn of phrase and sounds positively Janeite and, while there are many other sequels, prequels etc linked to Jane Austen's novels, most of which I dislike, this is not one of them.

Great STUFF and a good read. I gather this is Lynn's first novel so I wonder what she will do next?  How about bumping off Sir Walter Elliot or, even better, Lady Catherine du Burgh?   Now there is a thought.....

STOP PRESS - Lynn has very kindly offered two copies of Murder at Mansfield Park as a give away so please just leave your name in the comments section and I will choose the lucky winner at end of week

Badly done Emma....badly done

The title of this post is a dead giveaway, and yes, I have just finished a re-read of Emma by Jane Austen.  I realised the other day that I had not read it for a while and, as it is near Christmas and I have reached that pre-holiday holiday feeling, I am abandoning my To be Read pile which is sulking in a corner, and have turned to romance, crime and re-reads of favourite books.

I loved the recent BBC adaptation of Emma with Romola Garai but I know it garnered a mixed response, largely to do with the fact that great chunks of the script were not Jane but newly written.  I decided this week to revisit other adaptations and I sat and watched the Gwyneth Paltrow version which I have not viewed for some time.  What struck me straight away was just how strangulated Ms Paltrow's speaking voice sounded - while striving to sound English Upper Class she merely sounded as if she had got something stuck in her throat and this, coupled with a permanently wet look on her face, made me not  like her as much as I had hitherto.  Mr Woodhouse a bit too genial and amusing to be believable and Toni Collette not totally convincing as Harriet, but but but - yes, the thing that makes it all worthwhile, not just Jeremy Northam as Mr Knightley, gorgeous though he is - Juliet Stevenson as Mrs Elton.  Absolutely spot on.

One thing I cannot let pass about this particular version is Ewan MacGregor as Frank Churchill, sporting a hair style which just takes your breath away in its awfulness and a reminder, for me anyway, of what a boring actor he is.

So then I turned to a version made some ten years ago with Kate Beckinsale as the heroine.  She has it just about right, more matter of fact about her snobbishness and selfishness and more honest about her shortcomings.  Samantha Morton as Harriet, excellent; Bernard Hepton as Mr Woodhouse, also excellent; Prunella Scales as Miss Bates, no comment needed here on just how wonderful she was and then we have Mark Strong as Mr Knightley.  Now in real life this actor is totally bald so obviously he had to sport a full  head of hair and I must admit I was totally fascinated by its luxuriance and the way it floated in the wind.  However, not as bad as Ewan McGregor's syrup and this actor has the most gorgeous brown eyes and when he said to Emma 'I have lectured you and you have borne it as no other woman in England' and looked at her, I sat on my sofa and went all thing...

The only drawback of this well night perfect version is the Mrs Elton, played by an actress whose name escapes me (she was one of Bingley's sisters in P&P) who had the most peculiar accent which fluctuated wildly between Irish and American.  Not quite sure why.

Last year I watched a version of Emma made way back in 1972 with Doran Goodwin as Emma and I remember her being very very good, though her Mr Knightley looked nearer 50 than 40. It was shown on BBC4 and I watched it with great interest to see if it held up, and it did.  At the same time I picked up a version of Sense and Sensibility that I remember watching yonks ago and that was pretty poor, pace so funereal you wanted to fall asleep.  Here is what I said about it at the time:

"OK, apart from the pace, which was funereal, MY DEAR the vowels, the prunes and prisms and plummy pronunciation. All too much to bear.  Everything was so beautifully modulated, the lines were spoken with a reverence suitable for a service in the local Cathedral and it was all so niminy piminy and without any life at all.  I really could not believe what I was hearing.

The next thing I noticed was the hair, particularly those of the men.  Willoughby as befitting the cad  and  bounder had gold locks, fairly long and casual and the actor playing him looked rather like a young Rik Mayall when he was a bit gorgeous (recent pics of him on Google show that he is now totally bald);  Edward's hair was flat and seemingly glued to his head (the actor is also totally bald now) but the best of the lot was Colonel Brandon.  Curled and pomaded and masses of it, side whiskers the lot (cannot find a pic of him though I have Googled).  The last hair that fascinated me so much was that of an American actor, Cliff Robertson, in the 1970s Robert Redford movie, Three Days of the Condor (great film) where he looked like he had a back combed ferret on his head.  I could not take my eyes off Colonel Brandon in this adaptation".

(NB - I know this post is about Emma but these comments on S&S also apply to the adaptations I have been watching - shows how TV presentation has changed)

The latest Emma had Jonny Lee Miller as Mr Knightley with a very close crop, probably the Brutus which was fashionable at the time, and all the characters had much less puffed up hair than in other versions.  Even Pride and Prejudice, infinitely great in its Firthdom, has more hair than later adaptations...

Out of the three I have seen, in the end I plump for the Kate Beckinsale  offering.  About 90% pure Jane Austen and any additional dialogue fits in beautifully and just so well done.  Of course, no surprise as this adaptation was done by none other than Andrew Davies who I think deserves to be knighted for his gift for bringing the classic to life for us all to enjoy.

But, no matter how enjoyable and wonderful all these are in their various ways, nothing beats returning to the original text.  I know the most famous Austen opening line is 'It is a truth universally acknowledged..." and everyone knows it and it sets the scene  in one utterly perfect sentence, but read this one:

"Miss Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her"

I think this might just pip a universal truth to the post as far as I am concerned and I also admit that I might like Emma more than Elizabeth Bennett.....