Book Review: Masquerading as Jane Austin

I love cats – except when my cat starts stretching and clawing on my grandmother’s braided, older-than-me wool rug. I love how cats, when they get irritated in a cartoon-esque kind of way, unleash their claws and just swipe at something – except when the swipe is either at me or the boys. Once every blue moon, she’ll hiss. It’s so unusual, our eyes widen and then we laugh. If it were a daily thing, I’d toss her outside and not let her back in.

Every now and then, I need to unleash the claws of my frustration and swipe at something – not my boys or my husband, though. Scratching posts are expendable – so cats can scratch. Nothing of value is damaged. Today, my post is a scratching post to relieve stress and pressure without damaging something valuable.

In the last nine months, I’ve experienced the three most stressful occasions in one’s life, or so I’ve been told: a grown-up son’s marriage, moving to a new state, and the death of a family member (my father-in-law). However, sometimes just being a mom is stressful enough.

My pressure release activities are exercising (which I just started), candles (remember the yummy pear candle from Bath and BodyWorks a few years ago? Discontinued! Target’s Anjou Pear smells just like it!), and reading.

Reading anything Jane Austin will do. Sadly, Austin’s supply is limited. I’d read Sanditon, a novel started by Austin but completed by another author. The effort, while true to Austin’s characters and culture still show that just because someone who loves you, raises your child after you are gone with the intent to instill in them your values – a difference still exists- as was everything after the 11th chapter of Sanditon. Upon reading, though, I did not feel cheated. I just missed Jane Austin.

It was the same with Elizabeth Ashton’s novels. From Mr. Darcy’s Daughters to The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Althea Darcy, Ashton stays true to Austin’s detail of culture, behavior morés, dialogue and plot development. The only out-of-character decision was Eliza Darcy leaving her daughters at such important ages to go traipsing around the world with her husband. If you are an Austin fan, then Ashton is an author who strives to remain true to Austin’s story telling, providing authentic Austin treatment.

We have now reached my scratching post.

If Ashton is to Austin’s novels what Mr. Darcy was to Eliza, then Joan Aiken, author of Eliza’s Daughter’s is what Wickham was to Georgiana Darcy – Deceiving, ignoble and full of thievery.

Publishers Sourcebooks Landmark are culpable in the deception, calling this a sequel to Sense and Sensibility. Every Austin character – the heroes and heroines of Sense and Sensibility – are derided, portrayed as thoughtless, selfish, pridely ugly-hearted people. To call a Jane Austin novel a sequel and then to shred her characters into something unrecognizable is a deception equal to selling arsenic as ibuprofen.

The book ignobly strays from Austin’s “goodness-can-be-spun-from-any-life-if-you-apply-common-sense,-goodness-and-restraint” modus operandi. I love 19th century literature because goodness prevails. In graduate school, I grew to dislike 20th century literature because it was so hopeless. Aiken’s book reeks of 20th century hopelessness dressed in 19th century clothes.

While Austin never strays far from the socio-economic culture of her characters, poverty and its effects on woman are recognized and avoided at all costs but never brutally uncovered. However, Aiken strips away the thin veneer of polite society to reveal every vice imaginable – rape, child-stealing, murder, thievery, with more alluded to. Jane Austin would never be so direct.

Austin’s novels are not just a study of women’s lives in the English culture within a particular socio-economic status (respectability standing on the brink of destitution), but more importantly through verbal wit or nit-wittery slices and dices through society’s rules, to ultimately reveal the heart: its depth or shallowness, sturdiness or frailty. Morality stories? Undoubtedly!

Aiken tagging her book as a sequel to Sense and Sensibility is like me putting on one of Carrie Underwood’s beautiful dresses to sing at the Grand Ol’ Opry. Just wearing the dress does not make me look like Underwood or sound like a singer. Record producers would recoil in fright. It’s a wonder Aiken’s publishers did not react the same way.

Aiken committed nothing short of thievery – the kind of thievery like an organization who says they are collecting money for children in impoverished countries and then pocketing that money. Except, I was buying into spending a few hours in Austin’s world, albeit a promised look-alike world because no one can every be Jane except Jane. I did not want to reduce my stress level with pills, chocolate martinis, or ripping into my family members. I wanted to relax, read a book and let that tension just drift away. Instead, I was flim-flammed – tricked, swindled, cheated. You truly cannot judge a book by its cover, especially when it is covered with false advertising.

A sequel makes promises – Mr. Darcy-like promises, not Wickham-like promises.

I will now sheath my claws and put away the scratching post of Aiken’s book. I needed to release the stress and pressure. While the book did not provide it, it provided a punching bag to just vent, albeit indirectly, about something that in the end did not really mean a whole lot to my life. We all need relaxation and healthy ways to vent. Maybe the book needs to be re-packaged – Scratching post for someone who needs to let off steam.

Please forgive my cattiness – and if I scratched too hard on your nerves with my ill humor- I apologize! However, I’m now cozily ensconced back in my 19th century philosophy that goodness prevails and hope is never wasted!