Customer Reviews

Mansfield Park and Mummies: Monster Mayhem, Matrimony, Ancient Curses, True Love, and Other Dire Delights

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Imagine the scene -- as I'm sitting there reading, I come to a particularly hilarious bit and start cracking up, and my husband looks up from his computer with a most decidedly odd expression. So I have to explain to him exactly why I should find a scene of an Egyptian mummy being raised from the dead hilarious. After all, aren't reanimated mummies usually the stuff of horror movies, tromping about in search of their next victim?

Except Mansfield Park and Mummies is not horror. Not at all. Instead of a monster that's a Menace because it's a Menace, the revivified Pharaoh East Wind, now calling himself Lord Eastwind and enjoying the sartorial splendor of a Regency gentleman, is a witty chap who just happens to have this little problem. Every so often he has to top off his supply of the Breath of Life, and out of deference to the lady of the house under whose roof he is a guest, he is constrained to take only a small portion of the life force of any one of the servants. Which he does with utmost politeness, wooing them with dreams of Egypt and exotic beauty, and leaving them missing a little time and feeling most decidedly odd.

And he's a bit of a romantic, and is certain that Fanny Price must be his long-lost love of thirty centuries gone by. Yes, here we have an undead who is genuinely capable of love, and of having his heart broken upon the steadfast devotion of the object of his affection for the rather dour seminarian Edmund. And thus even the final defeat of the Mummy's Curse has its poignancy, and leaves me thinking, "and seal it with a kiss."

A friend got this book for me as a Christmas gift,
since Jung's new _Liber Novus_ was a little beyond
her means.

I read _Mansfield Park and Mummies_ in one weekend,
with howls of laughter, then re-read it with fewer
giggles and more introspection. Poor Jane Austen has
had many irreverent and awkward send-ups over the last
decade. Many of her newer literary 'collaborators'
have only a smirking relationship with their source
material, sampling it randomly and layering it with
a slick, hip, high-fructose current-culture candy
shell to make it palatable to commercial fiction readers.

Ms. Nazarian's take has genuine affection for, and
understanding of, Austen's tone and background. Rather
than zombies shoehorned into the Regency, the budding
Egyptomania in her version of _Mansfield_ leads to a
hysterical comedy of class and errors, laced with
enough gags to stand beside 'She Stoops to Conquer',
'Jeeves and Wooster', and the Marx Brothers.

Readers who enjoyed the humor and Egyptology in Elizabeth
Peters 'Peabody' novels might really like this. Casual fans
of Austen should delight in it. And Austen scholars, recoiling
in horror from the recent Zombiefests, should give this one
a try. It's gold, and I can't wait for Nazarian's next foray
into the Austenverse.

I have always thought that Mansfield Park is the weakest of all of Jane Austin's books. The heroine, Fanny Price is a weaker character than Elizabeth Bennett and less interesting than either Miss Dashwood.

Not so in Mansfield Park and Mummies, where she is elevated to the status of mummy fighter and vampire hunter (but sadly, not slayer). The book is filled with hilarious footnotes and modern slants on Austin's historic social commentary. The author's deft touches keep the book interesting throughout it's considerable length.

MP&Mummies is a faithful, and loving, reinterpretation of the original by Austen that also happens to be funny. I'm a huge Austen fan, love her books, and have read and re-read them many times. Vera Nazarian's mash-up kept me laughing, and agreeing with her interpretations of the characters. They kept their original personalities, and followed the original plot--it's well-nigh seamless how Vera did it. It's a work of love for sure. Mash-ups like this are a tight-rope walk between satire of the original satire that Austen wrote, respect, and a balance between the original text and the new text. Vera Nazarian has walked that tight-rope successfully, in my opinion.

I pick this up whenever I need a lift. I mean, come on, Aunt Norris as a werewolf-and that being an "open secret"? It's perfect. Other characters as vampires? (although not ever straight out announced as such) Perfect.

It IS long-as long as the original Mansfield Park, whereas many take-offs would be shorter, but that's okay with me. That means there's more to enjoy. I did start trying to ignore the footnotes, though (those did get tiresome after the first hundred pages), but other than that-fun! Really!

One word: hysterical.

I don't know how Nazarian does it, but she manages to meld two eras, two vastly different sensibilities, and two protagonists separated by a couple thousand years (and layers of bandages) into an entertaining tale that had me, for one, bent over with laughter.

If you liked PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, or if you know anybody who does, you have to have this book.

Additionally, you might consider it as a Christmas gift, that is if you know anybody demented enough to think the curse of the mummy belongs in the Regency period. And frankly, don't we all know demented people?

What would Jane Austen herself have thought of Nazarian's sendup? It's hard to say, but we must remember that Mansfield Park was written only four years before Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Food for thought . . . .

I'm not really a fan of linking Jane Austen with the supernatural, but I am a fan of humor. The joke of Jane Austen and vampires, zombies, sea monsters, etc., which might be seen as a cute schtick at first sight, is necessarily wearing pretty thin by now. But an exception should still be made for Vera Nazarian's book. The lady can write, and she is hilarious! This isn't just a reprint of Mansfield Park with a few supernatural inserts - it's a clever work of comedy in its own right. Just pure fun.

Nazarian does a nice job integrating Egyptology, mummies and the occasional werewolf and vampire into "Mansfield Park," and making the original novel a bit more fun (it's not my favorite Austen, I must admit). A fine read and well worth picking up.

Nazarian has managed to capture the voice, style, and plot of a Jane Austen novel and married this to a plot that would have made a good Mummy movie prequel. I highly recommend it.

I liked this book so much that I ordered multiple copies as Christmas presents for friends.

When I mentioned the title of this book to my Aunt Liz, she was no less than horrified that modern authors were tweaking with classic literature. Jane Austen, she said, would likely be rolling in her grave if she knew that mummies, werewolves and vampires were wandering the halls of Mansfield Park and menacing the residents and servants. I agree, although I'm personally inclined to think that Jane is rolling and convulsing with laughter at the cleverness of this silly send-up. The language is crisp, the pacing smart, the manners impeccable, and the imagery of scraggled zombies being mistaken by townspeople for dazed and drunken sailors is hilarious.
Christina Hamlett
Author of A Bel Air Lawyer in King Henry's Court

What can I say about Mansfield Park and Mummies? It wasn't what I was expecting, but also thankfully so. I laughed and laughed through Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, but was often taken aback by the graphic gore. You'll find none of that here, just a plain old Victorian Romance with supernatural elements thrown in. Besides the mummies, you'll find 2 werewolves and a vampirette--but none of them are particularly lethal. Although a fan of 19th Century literature, this tale of reincarnation and misguided unions, was a pleasure to read--in fact I can honestly say it was my one great book of the summer of 2010.