After weeks of not really reading, and battling my way through La Peste mainly in my wakeful nights, I felt the need to read something light and unchallenging – pure escapism. This novel fits the bill beautifully, and I have sat down to reading sessions with pure delight. I picked up this book during our village celebrations for the 75th anniversary of VE Day on 8 May, when neighbours had been invited to set out a table with things for other villagers to help themselves to.
As the title suggests, this story is a sequel (one of many) to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. James bases her writing style and the characters and their behaviours firmly on Austen’s novel. The story even gives a nod to other novels by Austen – Persuasion, in the explanation of Wickham’s recent employment as secretary to Sir Walter Elliot, with a brief description of the Elliot family and their circumstances, and Emma, when a tidy solution is found for the placing of baby Georgie at the end of the story.
This is a fairly satisfying murder mystery in its own right. Undoubtedly, James dwells on (revels in) the finer details of country house life in the early nineteenth century. The infamous ‘white soup’ gets at least one mention. I get the impression the author has familiarised herself, not only with domestic detail of the period, but also with the extent to which the political situation and ongoing war between England and France made itself felt in the lives of the British peasantry and the landed classes. There is, perhaps, a little too much digression from the main story – but I assume the author feels that her readers expect this, familiar as they must be with Austen’s work. The story of Pride and Prejudice is not only referred to, but spelt out in some detail. This doesn’t really detract from the main story – which is, in my opinion, rather thin. Instead, it serves to remind fans of how good the original novel really is, and take them back to their response to that story. And for anyone reading this who is not familiar with Austen’s work, even through the medium of TV (can such a person exist?) it is valid as a back story.
I enjoyed this book from start to finish. A perfect escape, light reading in these strange days of ‘lockdown’, a satisfying ending.
A rug and a book 