Longbourn Author: Jo Baker | Language: English | ISBN:
B00CCPIITQ | Format: EPUB
Longbourn Description
• Pride and Prejudice was only half the story •
If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them.
In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.
Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic—into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars—and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own.
This ebook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.
- File Size: 1708 KB
- Print Length: 353 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0385351232
- Publisher: Knopf (October 8, 2013)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00CCPIITQ
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,960 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #6
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Classics > Romance - #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Classics > Historical - #22
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Romance
- #6
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Classics > Romance - #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Classics > Historical - #22
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction > Romance
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the market is oversaturated with Jane Austen pastiches. Toss some zombies or a murder mystery into Austen's elegant accounts of the travails of the landed gentry, and you've got something that lots of people will buy, out of embarrassed curiosity if nothing else. I imagine the marketing of Jo Baker's LONGBOURN will target that audience, but those expecting a lighthearted parody or a return to beloved characters will be disappointed. This is less a companion to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE than a distant cousin, one that interacts with its relative rarely and in unrevealing ways. Fortunately, the story it tells is interesting enough in its own right to make a rewarding experience, albeit one that won't surprise readers who have more than a superficial knowledge of the period.
Where PRIDE AND PREJUDICE left the Bennet servants as faceless ciphers, in LONGBOURN they are the central characters. There are Mr and Mrs Hill, butler and cook; teenage maid Polly; and the heroine, Sarah. To this small, thinly-stretched team is added James Smith, the new footman. At first Sarah is suspicious of James, whose arrival in the household was the subject of a mysterious argument between Mrs Hill and Mr Bennet. As suspicion hardens into dislike, Sarah finds herself drawn toward the charming footman at neighboring Netherfield, who is also the first black man Sarah has ever seen. As she learns more about these two strange and fascinating arrivals, Sarah takes steps that will change her life forever.
The true subject of LONGBOURN is not, however, Sarah's romantic life, which mirrors Elizabeth's from PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and is equally predictable.
There is no shortage of books that are based on, related to, and/or inspired by Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice. In fact, it seems that the literary world has been recently inundated by works that claim a connection with the classic novel. And now, here is Longbourn, whose plot chooses to run alongside the original story, giving readers a glimpse into the lives of the Bennet family's household staff -- notably Sarah, a maid, James, the new footman, and Mrs. Hill, the housekeeper. And it's not pretty. While the Bennet girls go to balls, the servants deal with their dirty laundry. While Mary practices on the pianoforte, Sarah cleans up animal dung.
The novel itself is mediocre. Sure, the author is a descriptive storyteller, with sights, sounds, and smells flying all over the pages. And she has created characters with pasts and passions. But these characters do not leap off the pages. Furthermore, the novel lacks focus, trying to tell the stories of multiple servants, and switching perspectives so often and abruptly that the entire thing feels disjointed, and then, suddenly, there's a big twist, and a big shift -- but things don't get more exciting, only more grim.
Aficionados of Pride & Prejudice will, from time to time, recognize key events from the novel playing out alongside the servants' tales, but may be disappointed to find how little time is spent on our beloved, familiar characters. Mr. Darcy is barely even seen. Elizabeth and Jane have a bit more of a presence, but be prepared to find every member of the Bennet family -- yes, even beloved Lizzy -- to be full of faults, as seen through the eyes of the household staff. Some familiar characters are given a bit more depth than Jane Austen ever intended -- Mr.
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