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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointing, January 9, 2006
This review is from: The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy: A Novel (Paperback)
I normally steer well clear of derivative fiction having heartily disliked Letters From Pemberley by Jane Dawkins. However, I had been lured back to this subgenre of novels by Pamela Aidan's excellent series "Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman".
This book, however, was a disappointment. Although some aspects of it I enjoyed, particularly the descriptions of travel across the Alps in Regency times (did you know they fitted sleigh runners to carriage wheels when in thick snow?), there were so many other parts of the book that I found annoying that I was relieved the finish the book and certainly won't bother reading any others by this author if they're of a similar ilk.
I suppose the main problem with writing books that are semi-sequels to great literature is that your characters are fixed. Elizabeth Aston avoids some of the difficulties by dealing with the next generation of characters - Darcy and Elizabeth's five daughters. I imagine there will be a novel per daughter, and this is the second of them, I believe. "Mr Fitzwilliam" is the Colonel Fitzwilliam of Austen's novel, although his character seems rather different than in the original. Apart from that Austen's characters don't appear in person although they are mentioned. This was a wise move as it theoretically helped the book to stand on its own merits.
Except it didn't, as it didn't have enough. When reading a follow-on to a classic novel, even if the characters are different members of known families I expect the overall feel and tenor to be the same. But this is not like reading another Jane Austen or a Georgette Heyer novel. Here sexual morality is very different - our heroine lost her virginity to a gentleman just before he got engaged to someone else. What would have been a complete and utter social disaster is glossed over - partly because everyone else seems to be at it. I don't know of the truth of behaviour in Regency times in England, although I suspect that upper class women were careful to retain their virginity for marriage, but as Austen's characters never showed a whiff of bad behaviour except for Wickham and Lydia I felt this really didn't work. Would honourable Mr Darcy's daughter really have behaved like this? And then the rest of her behaviour carries on in the same vein. She marries an entirely unsuitable man (wouldn't her father and mother have dissuaded her?), then runs away from him and ends up agreeing to `live in sin' with another man once she is a widow. She also has a brief moment of glory masquerading as a castrato at the opera in Venice; somehow I think Austen might be turning in her grave at that one! The wildness in Alethea's character would work well for a novel set with a different cast of characters but for me it was wrong in a Darcy family novel.
I was also, throughout the book, unsure of the accuracy of the historical detail. Obviously Jane Austen was writing in her own time, but Georgette Heyer was a master of this period and you knew you could trust her; I was less sure of what I was reading in Aston's work. The comment about the sleigh runner on the wheels piqued my imagination but I have no idea if it is historically accurate or not; I hope so, but I don't know, and that irritates me. It felt rather more like a modern story to me with all the `modern' ideas such as homosexuality, problems within marriage, love connections without the institution of marriage. While there is certainly nothing wrong in considering these themes within books, I wasn't sure that a book in the Austen tradition was the right vehicle for this.
The hero, Titus Maningtree, was portrayed interestingly and he was a reasonably well-rounded character, except for the fact that the quest that drives him for the first two thirds of the book (trying to discover a family heirloom Titian painting) completely disappears once he discovers his feelings for Alethea and we never hear about it again. This is a bit messy in terms of tying up loose ends as we don't know what happened to the painting - unless it appears in another book. I for one can't face the agony of finding out.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a good read but not for Austen fans, March 18, 2006
While "The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy" was an enjoyable yet sobering read, I wouldn't recommend it as a must-read for everyone. If you're a die-hard Jane Austenite, and you abhor all those pastiches that play havoc with the great author's work, you'd really want to steer clear of all three (so far) of Elizabeth Aston's work. Ms Aston is a wonderfully compelling writer and she really does know how to spin a yarn and keep a reader happily engrossed. However, even while I was enjoying this novel, I couldn't help wishing that the author had chosen to write this absorbing tale without using/alluding to any of the characters that Jane Austen had created.
"The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy" focuses on the youngest of Darcy's and Elizabeth's daughters, Alethea, and opens with a very unhappily married Alethea making a reckless dash for freedom. Previously, Alethea had fallen in love quite passionately with a young gentleman who ended up marrying someone else in the end. But because of the marked attentions that he had paid her, and the obvious pleasure she had taken at being in his company, Alethea suddenly found herself at the center of some rather unwelcome speculation. Her heart bruised and her pride wounded, Alethea decided (going against the advice of those wiser than she) to marry another in order to silence the gossips. Unfortunately, her husband turned out to be a brute, determined to break her spirit and to control her completely. Fortunately, Alethea is not a Darcy for nothing, and daringly, with her faithful maid, Figgins, in tow, runs away from England, determined to seek sanctuary with her married sister, Camilla, in Venice.
I enjoyed this novel enormously but a few things did give me pause: 1) I thought that the romance angle involving Alethea and the gentleman she ends with could have been better developed. For most of the novel, Alethea doesn't seem to spend much time thinking about this character even though she does interact with him quite a bit, and yet quite suddenly in the last quarter of the book, her feelings seemed to have gone from irritation to love. Not incredibly convincing, I thought (and on another note, her more recent novel, "The True Darcy Spirit" had the same "problem" too); and 2) the entire subplot involving Alethea's husband in the last quarter of the book was incredibly rushed as well and not very satisfactorily resolved. On the plus side however was the fact that this was a very well written and intelligent novel, that dealt with serious issues like spousal abuse. "The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy" was not a frills-and-fluff novel and would have pleased many of the women who wrote in the 18th & 19th centuries with the seriousness of it's tone. It was wonderful to watch Alethea grow up and become more resolute, mature and clear-minded over the course of the novel. In my opinion however, the best thing about this novel was not the relationship and romance that developed between the two leads, but the relationship and trust that existed between Alethea and her maid, Figgins. Elizabeth Aston did a truly good job of "fleshing" out this relationship and making it one of the key elements of this novel. All in all, although I still do wish that this novel was not tied in any way to Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," the book was still a very good read.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Are you, like me, a sucker for all things Austen?, April 21, 2005
This review is from: The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy: A Novel (Paperback)
Yes, that's why I bought it--even though I was less than impressed with the forgettable "Mr. Darcy's Daughters." Still, hope beats eternal, the cover was lovely, and the premise very intriguing. As was the first chapter. And then...
It's as if the author deliberately chose to accentuate the tedious parts of the story while neglecting the parts that could have been truly fascinating. Here we have a heroine, escaping a cruel husband, who masquerades as a boy and crosses Europe; lots of interesting and amusing possibilities here. And yet, we are treated over and over again to endless boring conversations which do little to further the plot or provide insight into characters, who, by the way, remain rather flat and colorless.
Our heroine, blessed with a beautiful singing voice and finding herself penniless in Venice, gets a job singing the trouser role of Cherubino in Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" as a castrato. (Shades of Victor/Victoria.) It seems impossible that such a plot twist would fail, and yet, fail it does, as the author hurries through this section to treat us to more pointless conversations and tiresome introspection.
As for romance, once again, the author makes promises and then fails to deliver. Titus could have been, would have been, SHOULD have been a riveting hero. He is not. Their relationship is neither believable nor interesting. Neither is it particularly romantic. On the plus side, however, I did learn a few things about Portugal in the 19th Century.
Oh, and if you are looking for glimpses into the life of Mr. and Mrs. Darcy or any other Austen character, you won't get them here. None are persent, except a strangely silent Mr. Collins. That was probably a wise choice on the part of the author, who not only is incapable of reproducing Austen's style, but uses far too many anachronisitic expressions to even be considered remotely realistic.
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