Longbourn by Jo Baker
Dec. 13th, 2013 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmooreLongbourn is a novel that attempts to cash in on both the popularity of Jane Austen and Downton Abbey, centering the plot around Sarah, a housemaid to the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice. Which! I actually really like the idea of, and I was looking forward to it, despite having seen some grumblings about the protagonist often sounding like a modern person commenting on the lives of late 18th century servants. I mean, I love Austen, but she isn't exactly perfect, and I thought the idea had potential. Unfortunately, the book itself ended up being dull and predictable, and the omgmajorshocking plot twist that overtook a large chunk of the last 3rd of the book was blatantly obvious from the beginning..
For the most part, Sarah tries to choose between her two suitors while make frequent observations about the plot of P&P, except these observations mostly serve to say where we are in the timeline, as opposed to really offering much commentary beyond "Jane is so kind and virtuous, Wickham is bad news, Mrs. Bennet and the younger sisters are kind of annoying," etc. Sarah's suitors include Ptolemy "Tol" Bingley, a servant of the Bingleys whose mother was a slave of Bingley's father on a sugar plantation and who took the Bingley name, because that's what servants do (And I have now said almost exactly and as much about Tol's background and the possible implications of it as Baker does.) and James Smith, the mysterious new footman who Sarah dislikes and who Mrs. Hill, the housekeeper, immediately accepts and won't hear ill of despite his literally wandering up out of nowhere one day.
It's not hard to guess where everything is going within the first few chapters.
The thing is, it rarely really tries to do things with the plot, and is mostly a predictable Regency romance (albeit about servants, instead of gentlemen and ladies) that occasionally checks in with the plot of P&P. sometimes, Sarah makes comments about how Lizzy has "an obliging disposition" and that Jane was being considerate to get sick somewhere else so she wouldn't trouble her own servants. I think those bits were meant to be witty commentary, but they, and others like them, just fell flat. When it does try to do things, it's doing things that other canons have done before, sometimes the exact same thing, and not in an interesting way, much less as well as its predecessors did. If you've watched either version of Upstairs/Downstairs, Gosford Park, or Downton Abbey (any of it, despite the considerable drop in quality after season 1), you've seen everything it has to say about class, only say a lot more and say it better, and it doesn't begin to compare to Wide Sargasso Sea or The Wind Done Gone in terms of addressing the problems of a piece of classic literature. And it probably isn't fair of me to compare it to the latter two but I think it wants to be seen as the same kind of book, so I will. for that matter, for all it's problems, Lost in Austen did a better job of looking at P&P's issues, even though it had a legion of its own problems.
Technically, it isn't a bad book or anything, it just isn't a good or interesting book, either. It's being marketed along the lines of "Downton Abbey for Jane Austen fans" and i suppose if you just want Jane Austen fanfic, it's fine? But I found it to be a huge disappointment. I also don't think that people who aren't fans of Austen would get much out of it, because, well the writer is obviously a fan of the book, and the criticisms are light the few bits that come close to good deconstruction aren't until very late in the book.
no subject
Date: 2013-12-14 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-14 04:51 am (UTC)