Your online source for Jane Austen and her legacy
It is always a very special day when a new Pink Carnation novel is released. I had marked my calendar on January 20th with a big red X in anticipation. Lauren Willig is one the few authors that I just go nuts over. (How unprofessional to gush like a schoolgirl. I will be kind on... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Christina Boyd: Jane Austen. Fact: born December 16, 1775; died July 18, 1817 at age 41. Fact: never married. Fact: wrote six complete novels, including a few unfinished works, and juvenilia. Fact: lived out her life in a quiet Chawton Cottage with her older, spinster sister Cassandra and aging mother. Also... Continue Reading →
Mansfield Park is considered (by some) to be the dark horse of Jane Austen’s oeuvre and her heroine Fanny Price intolerable. Poor Fanny. She really gets the bum’s rush in Austenland. The patron saint of the weak, insipid and downtrodden, she is Jane Austen’s most misunderstood heroine. In fact, many dispute if she is the... Continue Reading →
In The Other Mr. Darcy, last year’s debut Austenesque novel by Monica Fairview we were introduced to Fitzwilliam Darcy’s American cousin Robert Darcy. Now the story continues with The Darcy Cousins, a Pride and Prejudice sequel to a sequel when his two younger siblings Clarissa and Frederick Darcy arrive from Boston and join their brother and... Continue Reading →
Northanger Abbey is the exuberant lesser-known child of Jane Austen’s oeuvre. Even though it was her first novel to be completed and sold in 1803, much to Austen’s bemusement it was never published and languished with Crosby & Co for thirteen years until she bought it back for the ten pounds that the publisher had... Continue Reading →
A nineteenth-century exotic locale, a handsome officer and a feisty heroine make for archetypical romantic fare, but Lauren Willig’s new novel The Betrayal of the Blood Lily is anything BUT a conventional bodice ripper embellished with historical detail. In her sixth novel in her “Pink Carnation” series, Willig exhibits once again that she is an... Continue Reading →
From the desk of Christina Boyd: Many modern versions of Jane Austen’s works fail to hit the mark because the author forces a "rewrite" of the original, altogether forgetting that some scenarios and mores from the Regency era make no sense in the modern-day world. Or worse yet, the author fails to deliver any character... Continue Reading →
Here’s a new novel that tugged at my heartstrings 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... Continue Reading →
Fall is in the air, and if you are looking for a great new murder mystery novel to cozy up with, Murder at Longbourn by Tracy Kiely is an excellent choice. Cleverly combining a traditional drawing room detective story and a comedy of manners, this surprisingly witty and beguilingly suspenseful whodunit is actually a contemporary chick-lit... Continue Reading →
When a new Pride and Prejudice sequel lands on my doorstep, I freely admit that the Austen geek in me goes into adrenalin rush. Usually after the third chapter I can see the lay of the land. Is the language reminiscent? Are the characters respectfully rendered? Is the tone appropriate? Is the storyline plausible? By... Continue Reading →
Book review of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (UK edition), by Laurie Viera Rigler.
From the desk of Christina Boyd: It's a wonder what wanton hubris an author must possess to undertake such a task of continuing a great work such as Pride and Prejudice. Regrettably more times than not, I have found the work falls short; but this is not the case with author Helen Halstead's sequel Mr.... Continue Reading →
