Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Very disappointing,
By
This review is from: Desire and Duty (Hardcover)
While the authors have made created an fairly interesting plot, following well the epilouge at the end of Pride and Prejudice (as they point out, excessively thoroughly, in their Historical Notes), and they have researched the period that the book takes place marvelously (also documented in their Historical Notes), they lack the playful writing that makes Pride and Prejudice so fun to read. The dialogue in this book makes the characters seem more like androids than the people we know and love from the world Jane Austen has created. The drama seems forced, and lacks humor that is necessary to make the somewhat predictable plot flow ahead. Also, not in keeping with Jane Austen's text, too much emphasis is placed on religion. The preponderance of religious conversations, and the emphasis on the beliefs of the characters, is not in keeping with the original story's disregard for the more weighty matters in the world. All in all, I was very disappointed in this book. It was a chore to read to the end, and I was not at all satisfied with it.
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A true disappointment,and not worth reading.,
By P Tupper "lawyerlady001" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Desire and Duty (Hardcover)
As a reader so enamored of Austen's talent and characters that I will read everything that even hints of a connection, I was at first delighted to find Desire and Duty. Too quickly that delight turned to sheer dismay. The book is clumsy. Its scenes drag and plod. The authors are to be commended for their excellent taste in literature, and excoriated for their pale counterfeit. I will not attack its premise or its facts. If it had at least entertained, its shortcomings would be easily overlooked. Unfortunately, it does not entertain, or even mildly amuse. In 45 years I have never taken a book back to a bookstore to demand a refund, no matter how disappointed I was in the book. I am sorry to say that Desire and Duty became the first. A reader's time is better spent on Aiken or Tennant.
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A horrid and pretentious tripe!,
This review is from: Desire and Duty (Hardcover)
I have read some Pride and Prejudice "sequels" that vary from passable to disgraceful. This one fits into the latter category. Oh. My. God!! And here I thought I'd read some bad books, but this one takes the cake! Desire and Duty takes us to Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett's marriage and their care for Georgiana, who takes a fancy for a man named Mr. Thomas Staley, a Waterloo veteran turned tutor. Even though there is chemistry between them, Mr. Staley keeps his distance because of his low connections. And there is also the matter that Lady Catherine de Bourgh has her eyes set upon the Duke of Kent to be Georgiana's husband. Despite their differences and obstacles that centered on their stubbornness, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth have a successful, happy marriage. Could the same happen with Georgiana and Mr. Staley? Could social differences be overlooked in favor of love once again? There are some twists in this novel.
The jacket in this book says, "Desire and Duty is unique among sequels to Pride and Prejudice since it is the only one which follows the ideas Jane Austen left for the continuation of her famous book." Um, excuse me?! Have I read that correctly? This book by no means follows Austen's ideas. To be fair, the book starts out okay. The authors (married couple) pick up the storyline from P&P's epilogue and that's commendable. But the rest is so ridiculous, so over the top and the authors are so pretentious that they reminded me of Mr. Collins. We get endnotes galore here. We also get blurbs from university professors and so-called Austen fanatics that give overenthusiastic reviews on how incredible this book is and how brilliant the authors are. Sounds to me that this couple tried a little too hard to impress their readers. I prefer authors who let their writing do the convincing though. As for the story itself, the premise was good, but the characters are nothing like the ones in the original. They lack the wit, insight and satirical feel of P&P. Jane Austen was one of the funniest authors I've ever had the pleasure of reading and I loved how she found humor in religion by way of Mr. Collins. Austen was the daughter of a clergyman and I thought her Mr. Collins was brilliant. It is clear to me that these authors didn't get the irony in Austen's writing at all. I mean, Kitty finds solace in religion here, for crying out loud! And the way Mr. Darcy went on about his father's death from schlorosis of the liver due to alcoholism was preposterous. The *real* Mr. Darcy would never have revealed such an intimate thing in a roomful of people. The only person I could imagine him sharing this with was Elizabeth -- in private! As for the rest of this novel, the writing style is insipid and sophomoric and the dialogue is atrocious. I know I am being harsh, but with the way the authors went on about how much research they'd made and how true they were to Jane Austen's work (though they do admit that they don't presume to be as good as Jane Austen), I was expecting something wonderful. That wasn't the case. Mr. and Mrs. Bader should have spent less time writing endnotes and listing their credentials and spent more time creating something a little more palatable than this. If you want to read a good (or fairly decent) P&P continuation, I suggest you skip this and read Presumption by Julia Barrett, An Assembly Such as This by Pamela Aidan or Letters from Pemberley by Jane Dawkins instead.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
|
|
