Customer Reviews

Desire and Duty

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(33)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The authors certainly seem to have done their homework on the time period - the endnotes are extensive. (But who expected endnotes in a novel, anyway?) Unfortunately, the endnotes are the only interesting part of the book. While the story may have been good (I don't know; I didn't get that far.), the writing was awful. The characters were unbelievable and did not resemble Austen's characters of the same names. The dialogue was stilted and fake. Descriptions were forced. All in all, I found this very amateurish. I could not "get lost" in the story or "feel" the characters because the poor writing continually drew my attention. After several chapters, it was simply too painful to continue reading and I returned the book to the library. I do not believe I have ever read such a poorly-written story.

Some novels try to mimic the same writing style as Austen, and some novels try to remain true to her plot or characters. This book does neither. The writing is "hokey" - I'm sorry I can't come up with a better word for it! While the authors go to great length to explain how they were true to the language of Jane Austen, they miss the mark entirely. Then you have the characters - while the names and places were the same (Mr. Darcy, Lizzy, Pemberley, etc.) there was very little likeness in how they were portrayed, not to mention a see-through plot. If you go into this book with the expectation that it is a stand alone historical romance, then you might not be let down by the final result, but if you are looking for a good follow-up to Janes Austen then don't bother, there are much better books out there!

I've read several Pride & Prejudice sequels in recent weeks, this is by far the worst.

While the Bader's did an admirable job of keeping with the historical acurateness of the novel, they didn't really seem to understand the characters or what made them appealing in the first place.

We have Lady Catherine who in the interest of Family Felicity forgives Mr. Darcy for marrying beneath him. Lady Catherine is a vindictive witch who would never have given up her haughty prideful behaviour and sure wouldn't have accepted Elizabeth who was said to pollute Pemberly.

We have Mr. Darcy becoming warm and open with everyone. Showing his affection in public. And Elizabeth, she seems to have become a 'dutiful' wife, not the Willful lady we all adore.

The authors have clearly delivered a thoughtfully crafted tale, consistent with the history and customs and class and sexual politics of the times. However, it lacks shine and wit for my taste. I miss the delightful and droll humor of Jane Austen, often causing me to laugh out loud after 2-3 pages of dialogue building to an understated punch. For those who love the P&P characters, they are here; as are their times. For those who love Jane Austen's writing gift, alas, it is lacking.

Attempting to write a sequal to a Jane Austen novel is a daunting task, to say the least. This book failed in the task miserably. While the authors tried to follow the story line JA set up in the final chapter of Pride and Prejudice, their story fell flat. The writing style was that of an inexperienced writer and something I would expect from a high school student. The characters did not come alive in the pages as they do in JA's novels. The dialog was built of one liners..."Elizabeth said "blah blah". Darcy said, "blah blah blah." Elizabeth said, "blah". You get the picture. In addition to a totally unsurprising plot and juvenile writing skills, the Baders attempted to impress upon their readers a little of their own agenda. In a scene where the Bennetts and the Bingleys have joined the Darcy's for a Christmas dinner, Darcy declares his father to have been an alcoholic and states that wine will not be served in honor of his father, noting that he had died of schlorosis of the liver.

This is the first book I have taken the time and effort to return to the store for a refund (where I had purchased the book used). On several attempts at reading it, I came across snippets that were so UN-Austen-like that I'd toss the book aside in disgust. I managed to skim to the end just to see that, sure enough, it ended exactly as I had thought. Then I took the book and the receipt back to the store.

Ick! I've bought every P&P sequel I could get my hands on, and this is the flattest and lamest of them all. Preachy, shallow, cardboard characters inhabit a drab world written for a second-grader. Drearily heavy emphasis on religion and morality with leaden dialogue leaves the characters as stick figures moving through stilted lines. The first couple of chapters are not so bad when viewed as window-dressing to Austen's masterpiece, but the authors should have ended the book there. It gets steadily worse and worse, to the point of being downright unreadable by the mid-way point. If you buy it, good luck getting through it.

Instead, I'd highly recommend "Letters from Pemberley," or "The Diary of Henry Fitzwilliam Darcy," both of which are quick reads, but very sweet, satisfying, and well-done. I also enjoyed "Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman," which was a bit Harlequin Romance-ish, but still very entertaining.

My Grandma got this book for free with a DVD she purchased for me. I wouldn't spend any money on it, because you probably won't want to read it ever again. The authors tried to copy Jane Austen's style of writing too closely, and the result is that everything sounds stiff and unrealistic. There are scenarios in the story that are way too dramatized. One of these is when Georgiana's dog breaks his leg. The characters all act in ways that they never acted in Pride and Prejudice. Mrs. Bennet suddenly becomes less annoying, Kitty becomes religious, and Elizabeth says dumb things that she never would have said. The reason I'm giving this book two stars instead of one is that it's actually quite entertaining. I found myself laughing outloud several times, just because everything was so ridiculous. It clearly lacks the quality and depth that have made Pride and Prejudice one of the classics, and it's not easy to think of them as two completely separate books. The characters are nothing alike, making Desire and Duty just another book.