Death Comes to Pemberley - P.D. James

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

First, let's talk about Jane Austen pastiche. You might think that I would like it; after all, I'm the girl who re-reads all 7 novels religiously every year or perhaps two if I'm deep in a Victoriana phase. Who would imagine that girl wouldn't want more Austen, amirite?

You'd be wrong. I've come to realize that longing for more Austen is not the same as accepting the drivel that issues from the pens of writers, both recognized and otherwise, who attempt to parse The Magnificent Seven into continuations of the romances that people who are not me believe are at the heart of Austen's work. Yes, you read that right: I don't think that Austen is about romance, or at least not entirely. Obviously everyone ends up properly paired at the end; she was writing for women, after all, and if there's one thing we know from the shelves of used bookstores everywhere, women love their proper pairings - particularly if they're accompanied by a little bodice-ripping. Bu Austen's most pointed references are to society and the manipulations that people utilize to get what they want - the end result isn't romance, but attainment of desire at the expense of those who value "society" above human truths.

And now, let's talk a little about this novel.

Elizabeth and Darcy are happily ensconced in Pemberley with their two boys and regular visits from Jane and Bingley. But before this all can be explained, James gives us the gossip's view of Pride & Prejudice, which is that Elizabeth is a conniving fortune-hunter and that Darcy was, well, conned.

When you start to wonder if a book will get any better by page ivx, maybe it's time to put it down. But I didn't put it down because I love me some Lizzy Bennet. More fool, me.

What follows is a laundry list of what this novel's problem is. Feel free to imagine me going all brown-girl on this book, waving my finger in the air to great effect while raising an eyebrow and saying things like, "aaaand another thing!" I may possibly be a Latina hair stylist in Washington Heights for the rest of this review.

- Elizabeth does not still have feelings for her sister's husband. She never really did, so pasting heart-flutterings onto her 6 years after her marriage to Darcy is... stupid.
- Darcy and Elizabeth hardly interact at all. They interact even less with their children, who are relegated to the nursery and only mentioned as plot points.
- Charlotte was blamed for Lady Catherine finding out about Darcy and Elizabeth's supposed engagement. To take a life-long friendship and reduce it to petty "domestic revenge" tarnishes both the friendship and the character unnecessarily.
- James tied in other Austen books. I know that Austen's books were all written and set around the same time period, but Highbury and Pemberley do not exist in the same world. Wickham working for the Elliotts is absurd, and Harriet Roberts nee Smith would never take in someone's bastard, even if it was the nephew of Mr. Darcy of Pemberley. Tying in other Austen characters smacks of inside jokes where none are necessary.
- Darcy is a laconic character. He never uses 200 words when 20 will do, and marrying Elizabeth wouldn't have suddenly turned him into Mr. Infodump. Phrases like "As you know, Magistrate, the sheriff's job is to..." should never fall from ANY character's lips - much less from Mr. Darcy's!
- Wickham is not a killer, and to try to paint him as a suspect just means that the inevitable acquittal is boooo-ring.
- Even more boooo-ring than the big reveal of the killer was the mutual explaining that Darcy and Elizabeth did in the last 20 pages of the text. They go on a walk and he proceeds to mansplain to her why he chose her and how she changed him, blah blah. It's as if James realized that her two major characters hadn't interacted in any significant way, then conveniently forgot that the confession scene in P&P ever happened.


Death Comes to Pemberley was my final attempt to enjoy Austen pastiche, and that enjoyment was a miserable failure. So authors, please take note: even if you're wicked famous and super-awesome, please don't use these (or ANY) characters to try to prop up your poorly conceived plot lines.

4 of 11 yellows



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The Thing about Jane

Back in the day, girls like Jane Eyre were considered subversive and not fit for the eyes of young ladies, especially young ladies of the governess persuasion who might have designs on their employers' hearts. This, my precious ones, is important: without once removing so much as a hairpin (modern temptresses of employers, take note!), Jane winds Mr. Rochester around her tiny, sprite-like finger, where he stays - despite the temptations of the beautiful Blanche, his *SPOILER* wife, and various foreshadowy things like a sundered horse chestnut tree.

I love this book. Every time I read it, Jane becomes more quietly plucky and more her own woman - it's as if she is more than the sum of her chapters. Mr. Rochester becomes more smitten, leaning on Jane's little steel frame figuratively and literally. The entire story has this beautiful arc and in some places comes full circle (see above re. leaning) that makes me feel as if the world ends up in the right place if you just follow your own staunch moral code.

This time through, I noticed some stuff about Jane that I maybe hadn't picked up on before. This, tangentially, is the beauty of books that stand up to multiple readings: once you know the story, you can immerse yourself in the world, seeing things that you didn't see because you were caught up in the DRAMA and the SUSPENSE and perhaps the AWFUL and DEGRADING PROPOSAL by St. John (pronounced "sen-jin," btw) on page 354 of my text. Seriously, that scene drops my jaw every time. And every time Jane says in her quiet way, "no, thank you, I will not marry you," I cheer a little harder for this most subtly feminist of Victorian novels. Remember, at this point Jane has no prospects of ever being married - the pinnacle of existence for the Victorian woman - and chooses to reject St. John anyway. That's ballsy. Y'anyhow, this time through I noticed all the bird and fairy references. In the first 3 pages of the book, Jane reads about sea birds in Bewick's History of British Birds, and it's off to the races from there. Everyone compares her to a bird. She is small, grey, has a bright eye, and perches on chairs instead of sits in them. She is a dove or maybe a sparrow.

And then, when all her dreams are about to come true in the least fulfilling way possible, Jane flies her nest. This realization hit me like a blow to the chest (I have had a blow, Jane!). Touché, Ms. Brontë, touché. (Tangent: I had a good time putting all the different little accents over all those E's. English needs more åccéñts.)

There is a reason that Jane Eyre and her first-person account of her life has grown in my estimation over the last few years (needless to say, it grew quietly.) Despite the giggles that inevitably escape 12-year-old me when Jane says that her "organ of veneration swelled," it's mostly a book about changing your station in life WHILE holding your morals together. I read this paragraph about Jane's struggle to leave Thornfield and promptly sent it to my friend who was going through a similar struggle involving leaving a man she loves but cannot be with*. Here, my chickadees, is the heart of Jane's character:

Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth - so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane - quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can counts its throbs. Preconceived notions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by; there I plant my foot.


It seems quite modern, doesn't it? And that is why I love Jane.



*because he's a stupid stupidhead who doesn't see how "we should date other people" also means "I don't think you're the one, but I don't want to get rid of you until I find her."

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

I had forgotten how much like a whirlpool this book can be. This is my third time through it; the first time was in print and the other two in audiobook, and I have loved it more every time.

Our heroine is a young, mousy girl who is being trained as a companion for world-jaunting women of a Certain Age and Status. Then Maximillian de Winter appears in Monte Carlo, and a convenient bout of flu leaves Our Girl on her own. De Winter’s first wife, the titular character Rebecca, has recently died, and all the world knows he is completely wrecked about it. But life must go on, and de Winter forms at least a passing fancy for Our Girl, sweeping her away from the vulgar Mrs. Van Hopper and into the role of the Lady of Manderly, de Winter’s ancestral home.

But Manderly is not all it seems, my precioussesssss. The servants laugh at our Fresh Young Heroine, who is a bit of a Country Bumpkin and has NO idea how to run a great house. The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, might be one of the most insidious villains in the history of novels, and is absolutely the template on which the despicable Nurse Ratchett was founded. She’s just that creepy.

To say more about the plot would begin to tell the story (plot and story being two distinctly different things, pets), and if you have not read this book I refuse to spoil it for you. Suffice to say that it’s kind of like Space Mountain; even my jaded, too-many-movies 21st century self is still surprised by the dark and twisty turnings. The tidbit of fact that du Maurier was fascinated by Brontë’s Jane Eyre (both book and heroine) makes Rebecca that much better - it is at times in direct contrast to the paragon of Jane, at times meshes seamlessly, and sometimes - dare I say - surpasses the original.

Three things I adore about this book:
1. The heroine is never named. She is only ever called “Mrs. de Winter” after her marriage to Maxim.
2. The title is, therefore, not about the person telling the story, but about the first Mrs. de Winter: Rebecca.
3. The descriptions of conversations, places, and people are brilliant, and despite remaining nameless, the New Mrs. de Winter is fully realized as a thinking, interesting person.

10 of 11 yellows, because it’s not as much of a rush the third time around as it was before I knew the Secret.

P.S. - For those of you who like Jasper Fforde as much as I do (is that even possible?), he is also a big fan of Rebecca. Yay!

Book Review: The Orphan's Tale: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente

Since this is my first official review, blog-wise, I should probably disclose that I rarely hate books. I've been reading voraciously since I was 3 years old, and in the last 26 years I've developed a pretty good sense for whether I'll like a book or not by reading the cover/flap and maybe the first page or two. I don't read the last page first or skip ahead or even read other people's opinions of books if I can help it. It is my opinion that a book should stand up on its own covers without help from passersby or that guy from Maxim who got fired to shill the story. I also have a bit of OCD when it comes to reading things In Order. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series makes me itch not because the stories are bad (they are in fact wonderful and hilarious) but because they don't come In Order. It's something I'm trying to overcome. It may not work.
Lastly, I'm sort of a fiction kind of girl. I rarely read non-fiction unless it is the autobiography of someone like Charlie Chaplin or Katherine Hepburn. I read to escape reality, which may have colored my view of the real world just a little. And it will not surprise you, having read this far, that my book collection contains mainly Classics, Fantasy and Chick-Lit.

The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente's work is haunting and lovely. Also, her name is hard to spell. She does an excellent job of weaving her stories together; if In the Night Garden were a textile, it would be an intricately braided piece of silk - nearly impossible and utterly fascinating. The story begins with a girl who was born with raccoon-like stains around her eyes. Her people call her a demon and throw her out into the garden of the palace to die or survive as she may. A young boy - one of the sultan's sons - sneaks out to meet this strange girl and is told that the stains around her eyes are actually stories, written in impossibly tiny script. He begs her to tell him her tales, and from there it's a masterfully crafted web of fantastic stories one nested inside the other.

"Grown-up fairy tale" is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot lately; the media seems to be as enchanted by child-like fantasy with more adult themes as the public is. Studios attempt to lure in adults with no children using these words, trying to appeal to a sense of whimsy that has gone out of the world we know and been replaced by a slight sense of panic underlying everything we see on the news and read in the papers. This book is also a grown-up fairy tale, but not in the way that Pan's Labyrinth was with its adult themes, or Enchanted was with jokes that appeal to both children and adults. In the Night Garden is grown-up because of the multiple layers of complexity involved. It is whimsical without being ridiculous,which is a difficult line to maintain.

I like Valente's story-telling style. She has also written books of poetry, and her poet's background adds fluidity to her writing. I keep coming up with imagery that involves silk and water and other such smooth surfaces when trying to describe this work; suffice it to say that I found it utterly delightful and will be reading more of Valente's work, including her poetry.

Book Reviews

The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente