Here’s a new novel that tugged at my heart strings and validated my belief that if the world was run according to Jane Austen, we would be much smarter and happier. Enuff said!
Fifteen-year old Ellie Barnett is a bookish geek. She excels at academics, but according to her caustic older sister, she is digging herself into a hole of permanent unpopularity with her scraggly hair, lack of make-up, and inattention to fashion. There is however, one boy who since kindergarten has paid her a bit more attention than she is comfortable with. Sam Blaine may be good-looking, athletic, brainy, and popular – but he is trouble – and just happens to sit behind her in English class taunting her with pokes in the back with his pencil and sexual innuendo. When she cracks open her next reading assignment, a copy of Pride and Prejudice, she begins to hear voices. Jane Austen’s British voice to be exact, interjecting observations and advice, specifically warning Ellie to beware of Sam Blaine. He is her Wickham, that charming scoundrel that wooed Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and then eloped with her younger sister Lydia. Ellie does not doubt the advice, just the whole hearing voices thing really freaks her out her out. Jane Austen’s spirit has somehow inhabited her mind, commenting in her acerbic early ninteenth-century sensibility on Ellie’s 1980’s life and romances and she does not know why.
Over the course of twenty years, we follow Ellie through her life challenges as a single women looking for love and happiness in what Jane Austen deems to be a morally confusing world. Who of us could ever forget their own first love, the painful realization that you are being used, or the first time you were dumped? As Jane offers Ellie witty and wise advice on family conflicts, career choices, and a barrage of bad boyfriends that come and go, Ellie slowly realizes that she must learn some life lesson before she can move on. For Ellie, one painful lesson was bad-boy Sam who Jane advises to stay clear of yet she is still drawn too. As their lives keep crossing paths over the course of the years, they never seem to be at the right place at the right time to work it out. Ellie trusts and values Jane’s opinion. Who better to advise her than an author who is valued for her keen judgment of human nature and romantic insights? But with Sam, she holds strong prejudices. Could she be wrong? Is he really her Wickham, or could he be her Mr. Darcy?
What an unexpected, uplifting, and urbane debut novel! To paraphrase Jane Austen’s character Lady Catherine, Marilyn Brant has given us a treasure. Granted that there are hundreds of Jane Austen inspired novels written over the years, this totally unique and original concept of Austen’s ghost inhabiting and advising a modern young woman is brilliant. The play of early nineteenth-century social mores against twentieth-century culture is so droll that I laughed-out-loud several times in total recognition. Like Austen, Brant excels at characterization offering a heroine in Ellie Barnett that I could totally identify with, and a hero in Sam that is so endearingly flawed that any woman worthy of her worn out VHS copy of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries will be happy to swoon over. Subtly powerful and amusingly acerbic, you will be gently reproved into agreeing in the power of love to transform us all.
5 out of 5 Regency Stars
According to Jane, by Marilyn Brant
Kensington Books (2009)
Trade paperback (352) pages
ISBN: 978-0758234612
Additional Reviews
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Kimberly (Reflections of a Book Addict)
Wonderful review! This sounds great, I’ve just added it to my TBR list. I love modern women’s fiction, and of course I love Jane Austen inspired fiction and this sounds like the perfect blending of the two. Thanks for the great review!
This sounds fantastic. Thanks for the review!
Oh, I’m absolutely getting this one as soon as I can! :) Definitely sounds like a unique concept, and any modern story with an Austen twist immediately gets my attention. Great review, Laurel Ann — can’t wait to find it!
Meg – as I was reading it, I thought of you immediately and hoped you would give a try. Please do. You won’t regret it.
Such a fine plot! Thanks for the great review, Laurel Ann.
Bargain with the Devil
Laurel Ann, I can’t tell you what a thrill it was to read your review today…thank you so much. :)
~M.
Your welcome Marilyn. Thanks for the great novel!
What fun! I’ll have to read this one!
I’ve heard a little bit about this one. I must, must read this one. My JA shelf just keeps growing :)
Great review, Laurel Ann. Thanks!
I must get this one: a copy for myself, and a copy for a friend who I know will relate to Ellie completely.
What a “novel” idea! :) Thanks for sharing.
~S.
Your not the only one to give kudos to this book, it’s been getting great reviews! I like your review the best though as you share the kind of things I want to know…. Probably why I enjoy your blog so much. By the way have you got any plans for a group/blog read-a-book next month or November?
Janeen, thanks so much for your kind complements. Been feeling blue lately and it really cheered me.
I have been contemplating another Austen novel-athon for November. I have been debating which novel. I thought Emma would be fun in preparation for the Masterpiece presentation of Emma next winter. I have also been holding off on P&P, cuz it scares me. So many of you are experts. How could I ever offer anything insigtful or enlightening? On the other hand, I would not have to write much to get the chat rolling would I?
Which novel would you like?
Hi Laurel Ann, Janeen & Co,
Emma is a great idea with the advent of the new BBC series…( A P&P group read may come up elsewhere at same time.)
Else, why not another of JA’s minor works such as Sanditon or Love & Freindship ?
Or even an Austen-related novel such as one of the short ‘ horrid’ novels Isabella recommended to Catherine in NA which have been republished on Valancourt books- Castle Wolfenbach ?
I’m so excited to get this book, now! I just won it on LibraryThing!
[...] the same key issue: the lack of solid a relationship with the self. Marilyn Brant, author of According to Jane, spins an engaging story around the concept Polonius described so simply, “To thine own self, be [...]
[...] I got my first reviews for my debut novel, they ranged from Laurel Ann’s lovely 5-star Austenprose review that said, “What an unexpected, uplifting, and urbane debut novel! To paraphrase Jane [...]