Customer Reviews

Lady Catherine's Necklace

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This novel was a big disappointment to me. It began with great promise but then fell apart at its midpoint. I can only conclude that Ms. Aikens was writing under a deadline because the resolution of the various plot lines in the novel's concluding scene is ludicrous and unsatisfactory. So save your money for another book.

I had rather high hopes for this books but it turned out to be a huge disappointment. It had a lot of promise-- starting with a love affair between Maria Lucas and Colonel Fitzwilliam and the secret past of Lady Catherine's late husband, Sir Lewis. These plots just fizzled and turned out to be annoying. I also thought that since Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins were in the book it would have been entertaining, but I was wrong. Aiken didn't know how to play characters like that. Mr. Collins had a brief cameo and Lady Catherine wasn't nearly wonderfully awful as Austen would her out to be. I don't suggest this book. Not at all. If you have a compulsion to read it,get it from the library and save your money.

Joan Aiken is NO Jane Austen! The title is unconsequential to the plot, there are aspects of life (i.e. homosexuality) which Miss Austen would never have included in a novel, and the ending feels as though she had met her maximum page numbers and was simply trying to quickly close things out. I've read "Jane Fairfax" and thought this would be as well done; more's the pity for me to have wasted my time here.

This book is rather interesting--if you're wanting entertainment and don't mind if it's a true continuation of the book--this is for you. My main criticism is that there is no love story! I call this sacrilege in an Austen sequel. I think it would have been a sweet story for Maria to marry Colonel Fitzwilliam. Pity she decides he's a rake and refuses to marry him.
It has the exact beginning of Sanditon--a carriage overturns, drastically affecting the plot.
This book is rather inconsistent--the story lines that seem to be developing at the beginning have disappeared by the end. For example, Anne de Bourgh is attracted to Mr. Delaval, leading her to be more animated than usual. A bit later, Mr. Delaval sees her laughing and thinks how much better it makes her look. However, all this is soon forgotten and Anne marries no one, and doesn't even think of getting married. I think it would have been plausible for her to have ran away from her mother's tyranny and married the half-gypsy garden boy. Pity he turns out to be her sister.
The characters aren't quite the same as they were in Pride and Prejudice--they are manipulated to fit this bizarre plot. I personally remember nothing of Lady Catherine constantly putting Anne down in Pride and Prejudice. On the contrary, she was always bragging about Anne--which was really funny because there wasn't much to brag about. Anne is not at all sickly in this book, which is quite a contrast from P&P. I find it completely inconsistent with the Maria Lucas of Pride and Prejudice to refuse Colonel Fitzwilliam and become Lady Catherine's housekeeper. Also, if she was such a great pianist, why does Mary Bennett play at the party at Lucas Lodge in P&P? You'd think Sir William would want to show off his daughter's amazing talent. I personally saw no reason to work in Mrs. Jennings--but if Aiken found it necessary, you would hope that she would make an attempt to keep her character the same as it was in Sense and Sensibility. Mrs. Jennings would NOT advise a young girl not to be hasty about getting a husband because it really wasn't that important. Also, it seems that Mrs. Jennings would leave 50,000 extra pounds to one of the Dashwood girls or a grandchild--the idea of her leaving it to Maria Lucas is just a stupid way to give Maria some money--which really adds nothing to the story.
What is the point of Anne's long lost brother turning into a long lost sister at the very end of the book? There was no buildup to this, except for it being rather odd that a boy would have the middle name "Joscelyn." It seems unlikely that Joss's nurse would keep pretending she was a boy after she had moved away from everyone she knew and had no more money to gain from this lie--she was no longer being paid to nurse her.

Joan Aiken is the only writer whose Jane Austen sequels I enjoy reading. Her "Jane Fairfax" was superb. This one was something of a disappointment, though. For one thing, it's a little book of 172 pages that can easily be read in an afternoon or evening, yet it's priced like books twice its size. For another, the writing is sometimes sloppy--highly unusual for Aiken. For example, a key plot point has Lady Catherine and her brother working to ensure that their sister-in-law's inheritance from her father-in-law stays in the family. Well, her sister-in-law's father-in law could only be Lady Catherine's own father, right? So that makes no sense. Elsewhere in the book Maria Lucas mentions having heard that other characters had met while staying with "a Mr. Bingley," a phraseology which implies Maria doesn't know Bingley, one of the key characters in "Pride and Prejudice." Impossible. It also surprises me to see Aiken having unrelated characters calling each other by their first names. And, as another reviewer mentioned, in P&P, Lady C considered her daughter perfection itself, so the turnabout here is jarring. Nonetheless this little book was fun to read, just not up to Aiken's usual standards. And it certainly won't deter me from trying other Aiken Austen sequels. (P.S. If you're adult who hasn't outgrown fairy tales, try Aiken's fabulous "Shadows and Moonshine.")

If you're reading this book to find out what happens to the Darcys, Bennetts or Bingleys you will be sadly disappointed. They are barely mentioned in this book. This is all about Lady Catherine and her daughter Anne. Since I actually found Lady Catherine amusing I enjoyed reading this book. It is certainly no equal to Jane Austen's original work but it was a fun light read. I do have two complaints with the book. One is that this book takes place at least 4 years after the end of Pride and Prejudice and Anne De Bourgh is only 17 years old. I have trouble believing anyone would have angry at Mr. Darcy for marrying Elizabeth Bennett instead of a cousin who according to Joan Aiken would have been a 13 year old girl at the time. My other complaint is that Joan Aiken uses characters from other novels in this sequel. Maria Lucas corresponds with Mrs. Jennings from Sense and Sensibility and Longbourn is rented out Captain Price from Mansfield Park. Other readers may like the characters from all of Jane Austen's novels interacting with each other but I find it pointless and annoying. It's been done to death. This is a book I'd borrow rather than buy. I liked it but I wouldn't want to read it over and over. Joan Aiken's novel Jane Fairfax is much better.

This would have been an excellent book if had not had so many glaring errors.If the reader wish- es to read a decent sequel to P&P,I suggest that they read "Letters From Pemberley".That was much better done.Ms.Aiken should at least read the book she is writing a sequel to before she writes her story.

'The first third of this book is very promising but then it fragments into a mishmash of inconsistent or undeveloped characters, improbable and unresolved plotlines, motiveless behavior and gross historical errors to become one of the worst novels that I have ever read.

I don't expect the authors of sequels and spin-off novels to fool me into thinking that they are the original author, I just expect them to respect the characters and the tone of the original (even if they take issue with them) and to produce a good novel. Otherwise I consider them a species of parasite; a book as poorly done as this one is something of an insult to Austen. This is a very un-Austenlike novel, being poorly grounded in its time and a very feeble romance. Unlike some readers, I actually enjoy it when the author brings in characters from other novels. I am reluctantly willing to accept as authorial privilege the prudent or cowardly removal of Mr. Collins from Rosings, although I find it much harder to believe that Charlotte Lucas Collins isn't afire to depart for Longbourne as soon as her confinement is over. The de Bourgh family has undergone a number of changes, or more charitably, previously unknown information has been revealed. The haughty Lady Catherine turns out to have been married to a wealthy manufacturer, which makes her disdain of the Bennets' connections rather hypocritical, and while that wouldn't surprise me, I am amazed that Wickham for one never mentioned this. I can well believe that Anne de Bourgh would experience her mother as a rather negative parent, even when her mother is happiest with her, but it seems unlikely that Lady Catherine would have such a change in attitude towards her daughter. Although in the beginning of the book, she continues to boast of Anne, by the end she refers to her as an unattractive girl unlikely to ever find a husband. Lady Catherine has also acquired at least one brother, Lord Lucas, and is the sister-in-law of the Duchess of Anglesea, a fact that she somehow neglected to throw into Elizabeth Bennet's face.

These would not ruin the book if it were not for its general flaws as a novel. There are heavy hints that the Delavals, staying at Rosings after a carriage accident, are some sort of con artists, but this plot line is simply dropped and their characters are never coherently developed. The plotline involving Joss is idiotic on many grounds, not the least being that even at the height of Victorian prudery, still years in the future, it was customary for parents to take note of the sex of their children. It surpasses my suspension of disbelief to accept anyone in this time and place believing that there was more than one virgin birth in the history of humankind. Lady Catherine speaks to Lord Lucas of "our sister-in-law", the Duchess of Anglesea. It isn't important that the usage at the time would probably have been "my sister", but who is this woman? Since Lord Lucas is not married, she is presumably the wife of another brother who was the Duke. (I thought that Fitzwilliam, Darcy's cousin, was the son of Lady Catherine's brother the Earl.) Or, if one stretches the title, perhaps she is the sister of Sir Lewis De Bourgh, but then she and Lady Catherine have the same father-in-law and one would not expect him to be referred to as "her" (the Duchess') father-in-law, but as "my" or "our" father-in-law. If she is Duchess (and wealthy) by virtue of a second marriage, it is hard to understand why she would care to leave her money to her first set of in-laws, however much they might wish it. I suppose that it doesn't really matter, since the character's entire purpose is to introduce an inane plot line. I won't reveal the windup to Maria Lucas' story, but I find it quite implausible.

Then there are the gross historical errors. Aiken has it that the de Bourghs tore down the ancestral family seat of Lady Catherine's family, Hunsford Castle, and replaced it with Rosings. If she had a brother (or brothers) the Castle would almost certainly have gone to a male heir, even if it wasn't entailed. It's not that it is impossible that a daughter might inherit an unentailed property in preference to a son, but thereby should hang a tale - when Lord Lucas tells his story about Hunsford, his listeners should be surprised. One of the plot lines originates partly in the belief of an Anglican clergyman that he can shorten his stay in Purgatory by not having sex with his wife. Article XXII of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Anglican church specifically rejects the idea of Purgatory, and I can think of only one (no longer extant) Protestant theology that considers marital celibacy to be a good idea except as a form of birth control. The idea that a wealthy heiress in this era (or any other, for that matter) would have trouble attracting a husband is nonsense: Lord Byron's mother was famously unattractive.

The general sloppiness of this novel makes it rather pointless. I can only suppose that Aiken was under a contract and dashed off this mess that her publisher accepted with little or no editorial input. I was going to avoid all her Austen rip-offs, but curiosity got the better of me. Jane Fairfax: The Secret Story of the Second Heroine in Jane Austen's Emma is actually pretty good - the only one that I think Janeites tolerant of sequels might enjoy.

I woud have given this a 2-1/2, if that had been available, if only out of sentiment. I read quite a few of this author's books when I was younger, but either my standards were much lower then or hers are now. It was readable enough, and she had the premise for an interesting story, but whether she lost interest or just got sloppy, it ended up being wildly improbable. Apart from killing off a couple of my favorite Austen characters, I feel that she did actual violence to the character of Col. Fitzwilliam, who was extremely likeable in Pride and Prejudice but comes off as slightly shady in this book. I agree with other reviewers that some of the plot details are extremely unlikely and conflict with the original, such as the idea that the estate was from Lady Catherine's family (she specifically mentions in P&P that Sir Lewis de Bourgh's family did not find it necessary to entail it in the male line so Anne can inherit), and the suggestion that Sir Lewis was a nouveau riche is even more laughable. I've often thought that an interesting novel could be written telilng Anne's story, but this is NOT it.

A novel by Joan Aiken, one of my favorite writers. It's a continuation of Pride and Prejudice, and I know, I know, one oughtn't mess about with a classic, but...This one is just really good fun, and Aiken is talented far beyond the skills of other Austen emulators. The story centers around the stuffy, opinionated Lady Catherine de Bourgh, disappointed that her nephew Darcy has gone and married that Bennett woman...and what with carriage accidents, relatives visiting, inheritances, long-secreted scandals, lost heirs and plots within plots, we're in for a lively, pleasureable read. No, it's not Austen. It can't be Austen, and she doesn't claim so. It's a modern novel with Austen-esque sensibilities, and Aiken is really good at 'em. She takes minor characters and fleshes them out, fantasizing over what happened after the happily-ever-after endings of the original novels.

Aiken has written a shelf-ful of Regency romances, all of which are clever, entertaining, and vastly better than anything one finds in the romance paperback section these days. And her Austen homages are uniformly excellent--my favorite is probably Jane Fairfax, the Emma story told from a very different point of view.