Virginia D. (vldbookworm) - reviewed on 10/17/2009 + 18 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

I do not recommend this book for Jane Austen fans; it is in an entirely different style, although it makes use of some of the characters from "Sense and Sensibility". It seems to be more of an anti-Austen book: no one gets married, the war with France is frequently mentioned, nearly everyone of any significance dies, and the Austen characters have almost all suffered dismal fates. There is considerable emphasis on the sorry lot of women at the time, as well as some excursions into parapsychology (auras and fortune telling). The whole thing is told in memoir mode, by an unreliable narrator. I was very disappointed in this book; I had previously read "Jane Fairfax", by the same author, and it was very good. Perhaps the difference is that this book occurs after the end of Austen's story, so the author had to invent everything, while "Jane Fairfax" occurs simultaneously with "Emma".

The dust jacket summary was clearly not written by someone who had read the book; it overstates the relationship with the Austen characters and gets the sequence of events wrong.

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