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Title: Lady Catherine's Necklace by Joan Aiken ISBN: 0-312-24406-1 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.12 (8 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Fun reading but not up to Aiken's usual high standards
Comment: Joan Aiken is the only writer whose Jane Austen sequels I enjoy reading. Her "Jane Fairfax" was superb. This one was something of a disappointment, though. For one thing, it's a little book of 172 pages that can easily be read in an afternoon or evening, yet it's priced like books twice its size. For another, the writing is sometimes sloppy--highly unusual for Aiken. For example, a key plot point has Lady Catherine and her brother working to ensure that their sister-in-law's inheritance from her father-in-law stays in the family. Well, her sister-in-law's father-in law could only be Lady Catherine's own father, right? So that makes no sense. Elsewhere in the book Maria Lucas mentions having heard that other characters had met while staying with "a Mr. Bingley," a phraseology which implies Maria doesn't know Bingley, one of the key characters in "Pride and Prejudice." Impossible. It also surprises me to see Aiken having unrelated characters calling each other by their first names. And, as another reviewer mentioned, in P&P, Lady C considered her daughter perfection itself, so the turnabout here is jarring. Nonetheless this little book was fun to read, just not up to Aiken's usual standards. And it certainly won't deter me from trying other Aiken Austen sequels. (P.S. If you're adult who hasn't outgrown fairy tales, try Aiken's fabulous "Shadows and Moonshine.")
Rating: 1
Summary: no love story!!!
Comment: This book is rather interesting--if you're wanting entertainment and don't mind if it's a true continuation of the book--this is for you. My main criticism is that there is no love story! I call this sacrilege in an Austen sequel. I think it would have been a sweet story for Maria to marry Colonel Fitzwilliam. Pity she decides he's a rake and refuses to marry him.
It has the exact beginning of Sanditon--a carriage overturns, drastically affecting the plot.
This book is rather inconsistent--the story lines that seem to be developing at the beginning have disappeared by the end. For example, Anne de Bourgh is attracted to Mr. Delaval, leading her to be more animated than usual. A bit later, Mr. Delaval sees her laughing and thinks how much better it makes her look. However, all this is soon forgotten and Anne marries no one, and doesn't even think of getting married. I think it would have been plausible for her to have ran away from her mother's tyranny and married the half-gypsy garden boy. Pity he turns out to be her sister.
The characters aren't quite the same as they were in Pride and Prejudice--they are manipulated to fit this bizarre plot. I personally remember nothing of Lady Catherine constantly putting Anne down in Pride and Prejudice. On the contrary, she was always bragging about Anne--which was really funny because there wasn't much to brag about. Anne is not at all sickly in this book, which is quite a contrast from P&P. I find it completely inconsistent with the Maria Lucas of Pride and Prejudice to refuse Colonel Fitzwilliam and become Lady Catherine's housekeeper. Also, if she was such a great pianist, why does Mary Bennett play at the party at Lucas Lodge in P&P? You'd think Sir William would want to show off his daughter's amazing talent. I personally saw no reason to work in Mrs. Jennings--but if Aiken found it necessary, you would hope that she would make an attempt to keep her character the same as it was in Sense and Sensibility. Mrs. Jennings would NOT advise a young girl not to be hasty about getting a husband because it really wasn't that important. Also, it seems that Mrs. Jennings would leave 50,000 extra pounds to one of the Dashwood girls or a grandchild--the idea of her leaving it to Maria Lucas is just a stupid way to give Maria some money--which really adds nothing to the story.
What is the point of Anne's long lost brother turning into a long lost sister at the very end of the book? There was no buildup to this, except for it being rather odd that a boy would have the middle name "Joscelyn." It seems unlikely that Joss's nurse would keep pretending she was a boy after she had moved away from everyone she knew and had no more money to gain from this lie--she was no longer being paid to nurse her.
Rating: 5
Summary: More Aiken, Please!
Comment: A novel by Joan Aiken, one of my favorite writers. It's a continuation of Pride and Prejudice, and I know, I know, one oughtn't mess about with a classic, but...This one is just really good fun, and Aiken is talented far beyond the skills of other Austen emulators. The story centers around the stuffy, opinionated Lady Catherine de Bourgh, disappointed that her nephew Darcy has gone and married that Bennett woman...and what with carriage accidents, relatives visiting, inheritances, long-secreted scandals, lost heirs and plots within plots, we're in for a lively, pleasureable read. No, it's not Austen. It can't be Austen, and she doesn't claim so. It's a modern novel with Austen-esque sensibilities, and Aiken is really good at 'em. She takes minor characters and fleshes them out, fantasizing over what happened after the happily-ever-after endings of the original novels.
Aiken has written a shelf-ful of Regency romances, all of which are clever, entertaining, and vastly better than anything one finds in the romance paperback section these days. And her Austen homages are uniformly excellent--my favorite is probably Jane Fairfax, the Emma story told from a very different point of view.
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Title: An Assembly Such as This (Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman: Book 1) by Pamela Aidan ISBN: 0972852905 Publisher: Wytherngate Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Excessively Diverted: The Sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by Juliette Shapiro ISBN: 1589392647 Publisher: Virtualbookworm.com Publishing Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Jane Fairfax: Jane Austen's Emma, Through Another's Eyes by Joan Aiken ISBN: 031215707X Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Mr. Darcy's Daughters : A Novel by Elizabeth Aston, Jane Pride and Prejudice Austen ISBN: 0743243978 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: More Letters From Pemberley: 1814-1819: A Further Continuation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by Jane Dawkins ISBN: 0595283721 Publisher: iUniverse Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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