Longbourn

Longbourne / 978-0345806970I've never been a huge fan of Pride & Prejudice, though I freely acknowledge Jane Austen's skill as a writer. But I've always been more interested in the lives of the serving girls than the lives of the women upstairs, with their balls and shoe-roses. (Seriously, Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace is one of my favorite novels specifically *because* of all the servanty bits.) So as soon as I heard of Longbourne on Sarah Wendell's review site (Smart B------, Trashy Books), I knew I would love it.I sped through this book over the course of three days and bitterly resented every moment that I had to put it down! As other reviewers have mentioned, this book is more "around" Price & Prejudice than "about" it, and the format of the one novel serves as a perfect backdrop for the material in this one. Jo Baker's writing is superb and evocative, and fits well with the language I expect in a Regency without being turgid to slog through. Baker has wholly embraced the servant framing, and we receive all the world-building of that sort which you could possibly hope for, and she perfectly interweaves characterization through the daily grind of chores.What I like most about this novel is how it focuses so well and so thoroughly on its entire cast of characters. Whereas this might be confusing or jarring in another novel, the multiple characters work well here and we care deeply about exploring the romantic relationship between Sarah and the men in her life, and the surrogate familial relationship between the servants in the household as they quarrel and love and comfort and scold and shelter each other. The result is realistic without being too harsh, touching without being saccharine.I struggle with recommending this book without giving too much of the plot away, but I will touch briefly on the issue of Mr. Bennet. I will say that I have never much cared for Mr. Bennet--yes, he is the comic relief and gets the best lines, but he is also harsh to his family members and careless of his daughter's futures. Longbourne explores this side of his character further, pointing out (for example) how callous it is for him to receive Mr. Collins for a stay without alerting the household staff. The staff not only have to prepare at short notice for a guest, they also need to impress Mr. Collins deeply so that he will not dismiss them when he inherits the house. I thought this handling of the character of Mr. Bennet was realistic towards what was displayed in the original P&P novel; here he is not overtly villainized, but his casual self-indulgence does provide some of the conflict for the servants to overcome.If I can find fault with this book, it is that at the 3/4 point there is an extended flash-back which is well-written but could not hold my interest as I was too anxious to find out what would happen in the future to take time out to hear about the past. This is important to the characterization in the novel, though, and I don't feel right complaining that the book hooked me so deeply that I couldn't wait to turn each page!A couple more things I want to mention that gave me great pleasure: One, this is the first Regency book I've read which has a black man as both a major character *and* as a viable party in a love triangle. I felt like this was handled fairly well, and he is treated in the story with respect from most parties and like it would be no big deal for Sarah (who is white) to marry him. Even the characters who react to him in (relatively mild) racist ways do acknowledge that he's the handsomest man in town and certain to turn the girls' heads. I loved that.Two, this is also the first Regency book I've read which has a gay man in it. And even better, the book strives to not treat him like a rare unicorn: one line which particularly pleased me was "The farmhands--at least, those of them that tended towards the liking of women--stopped and stared, mouths hanging open, as she went by in Mary's pretty cast-offs." Of course, I haven't read a ton of Regency books, but it seems (in my experience) that a lot of authors tend towards entirely white casts and heteronormativity; I appreciated that Jo Baker didn't do that for her novel.Probably the best compliment I can give Longbourne, though, is that it made me want to read Pride & Prejudice again (something I'd decided I'd had enough of for a lifetime) just so that I can relive the lives of Sarah and Mrs. Hill and James and Polly and Mr. Hill all over again in my imagination. I strongly recommend this book and consider it the best fiction I read in all of 2013. (And I most seriously hope that Jo Baker decides to tackle Sense & Sensibility next, if she sticks with Jane Austen as an inspiration.)~ Ana Mardoll

This book surprised me. Knowing it was a retelling of Pride and Prejudice from the servants' perspective, I figured it would be very different from the original, but I really had no idea just how different. I haven't read that many reviews of it, but I imagine it's got a lot of purists' unmentionables in a twist. There's a gritty realism to it that stands in stark contrast to the sanitized world of Austen's novels.In Longbourne, readers get a healthy dose of filth, violence, abuse, sex (though mostly implied), and bodily fluids. Many bodily fluids. More bodily fluids than you could possibly expect from a book like this. Which is the only thing that makes sense, really, because it was the servants' responsibility to clean up those bodily fluids, and to gloss over it would make the book lose credibility.This book uses the storyline of Pride and Prejudice as a framework only. Yes, you get to see most of the characters from the original at some point, but they're usually described from a different angle, one that I'm sure a lot of Austen fans will find annoying if not outright infuriating. Seen through the eyes of servants, these are not quite the characters we're familiar with. Elizabeth does not have the traits of a heroine here; she mostly seems selfish, and condescending towards the servants. Jane is dismissed as "a good and pretty girl, so deserving of good and pretty things." Lydia and Kitty are pretty much the characters we know, but Mary is painted in a far more sympathetic light than we've come to expect. Ditto for Mr. Collins, who the reader will feel more pity for than scorn in this story. Mrs. Bennet is less obnoxious and ridiculous; Mr. Bennet is less witty, more bitter and mean. Wickham is even more slimy and despicable. And Bingley and Darcy are so far removed from the story that they're pretty much non-entities. Instead of offending me, though, all these things just made perfect sense--and I felt like I was reading something entirely new.One negative review I did read complained that there was too little of actual P&P in this novel and the author only wrote it as a retelling of that book because it would sell better. I don't agree with that at all. I think there's great value in this as a twist on a familiar and beloved story. It gives the world of P&P more dimension, more color, and more life. It makes you realize that the world you read about in Austen's novels is only the glittery surface of a past that actually bears a lot of resemblance to the world today--and to actual, real life.I understand why an Austen fan might find all of this off-putting. This story makes the servants seem so much more complex, more sympathetic, more real, and more interesting human beings than any of the "on-screen" characters of Pride and Prejudice. I can see how it might ruin the original story, because you'll find yourself looking at all of it quite differently. Frankly, it makes the conflicts and difficulties of the P&P characters seem pretty trivial, and all the drama pretty trumped-up and obnoxious. The lower classes had real problems. The upper classes had "first world problems."I'm a huge fan of gritty realism, and to say I loved this aspect of the book would be an understatement. Has it ruined the original story for me? I doubt it, not any more than the campy-but-fun smut that is "Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife" ruined it for me (a book I read so long ago my copy has the old title, "The Bar Sinister"). I'm not a purist. I'm just someone who wants to read a good story.As for the writing, the author's prose is deceptively simple: whether it's a sight or an emotion, she brings this world to breathing, pulsing life with writing that is as plain as it is beautiful and evocative. She has the ability to paint a more vivid picture in one sentence than many writers can do in ten. The sensory details in this book are so plentiful and so poetic that it takes little imagination to become completely immersed in this world.There are two reasons I'm giving it four stars instead of five. The biggest flaw is the lengthy section of flashbacks that happens just after the halfway point. It just didn't feel necessary or organic to the story, especially since that is pretty much the last we see of that character-- you never get back inside that character's head again once the novel returns to the "present day." I also felt that the ending was a bit too vague for my tastes, but then, I'm a romance reader at heart, and the way this wraps up left me wanting an epilogue where everyone that deserves it is happy and healthy.Ultimately, I enjoyed this very much, and I highly recommend it unless you're a purist, in which case, don't even consider reading it, because you'll undoubtedly loathe it.

Bad quality

Ottimo libro.. l ho usato per esami universitari

Good read. Jane Austen stayed away from politics but this contemporary writer’s take on the servants lot at the time and the wider world is insightful.

Beautifully written. Also makes you think about P&P characters again, in a more critical way, which is good.

I enjoyed it.