Customer Reviews

Pemberley: Or Pride and Prejudice Continued

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(66)

 

 

I forced myself, through 184 measly pages, to finish this unfortunate book even though I couldn't stand to stomach the book after the first few chapters, only because I hate leaving books unfinished. The first thing that really, really bugged me throughout the book is how Jane could have a 1 yr old child after being married for only 1 year and Lydia have 4 children after being married for only around a year and a half? What in the world was she thinking? Second, it seems as if she never even read P&P because many of her facts are impossibly wrong. I won't go into examples of that because they are too numerous. But I will say taht she seems to have happily overlooked the last chapter of P&P, where Austen goes into some detail describing their lives after they've been married. Third, the characters of Elizabeth and Darcy and everyone else are horribly, horribly misrepresented. Elizabeth comes off as some weak-willed pushover idiot, who does nothing but cry and pine over Darcy and over all her shortcomings. Why she would ever have doubts over Darcy's fidelity and intentions towards her is another question I'll never be able to answer. And I cannot even begin to imagine that Darcy would revert back to his cold, proud attitude found in the beginning of P&P. If he loved Elizabeth so much in P&P, he would never go through the lengths of alienating her in her new home. I found Mrs. Bennet extremely annoying. Why so many chapters were devoted to her I can scarce imagine. And Georgiana was seen as a stupid brat, easily swayed by Miss Bingley. Georgiana was a sweet, understanding, and very shy child in P&P. She loved and admired Elizabeth and would never stoop to the level of snickering and making fun of her with Miss Bingley behind her back. And would anyone in their right mind believe that Bingley, of all people!, would have an illegitimate child with some random Frenchwoman? Finally, the behavior of the characters definitely do not fit in this time period. Women do not speak so openly about pregnancy and they definitely do not do it in front of men. They also do not cheerfully discuss 'douching oneself with vinegar and water' over tea or ever. All in all this was one of the worst books I've ever read. Tennant took gross liberties with the characters of P&P that would make anybody cringe after seeing what they've become. There are huge factual and historical inaccuracies spread throughout the book. This book just left a bad taste in my mouth after reading it.

My main reaction on reading this dreadful novel was to question whether Emma Tennant has ever actually read 'Pride and Prejudice'?

She gets almost everything wrong. The chronology is completely haywire - not only does Lydia, still aged 17, and married just over a year, have four children, three of whom are old enough to cheer as they arrive at Pemberley (with their father, whom, according to JE, Darcy would never receive at Pemberley), but even Jane, who has not yet been married a year, has a daughter who is old enough not only to talk, but even to manage a hoop!

ET kills of the delightful Mr Bennet, despite JA's specific statement that he often visited Pemberley and therefore by implication that he did not die just after Jane's and Lizzie's weddings. (ET's Mrs Bennet has been a widow nine months by Christmas so her Mr B must have died in March)

JA's Georgiana is the same age as Lydia, therefore younger than Mary and Kitty, but ET says she is older even than Mary, though when her age is given it is the same (17) as Lydia's.

In 'P&P', Mr Gardiner's letter to Mr Bennet is dated Monday August 2. There was a Monday August 2 in 1813, the year when 'P&P' was published. Lydis stayed two weeks with the Gardiners before her marriage, also on a Monday, so she was married on 16 August, just aged 16. ET has her age as still 17, so this novel must be set at Christmas 1814. Yet Master Roper asks Col Kitchiner of he was wounded at Waterloo - which was fought in June 1815! And Mr Collins plans a park feature commemorating Waterloo!

Master Roper is evidently a relative of darcy through his mother's family. In this case, how can he be Darcy's heir? Pemberley must have come to him from his father's side, not his mother's! And if Roper is the heir, how come Darcy apparently never heard of him before, but Lady C did?

Talking of Roper, he must be psychic, because he predicts the arrival of large numbers of visitors from Manchester and other cities. How can he possibly foresee mass tourism, 11 years before the opening of the very first railway in 1825?

ET states at one point that Georgiana had been brought up exclusively at Pemberley, and at another that she was brought up by Lady C at Rosings. JA says that Georgiana had spent most of her time in London after the death of her father.

JA names the Bennets' housekeeper as Mrs Hill - but ET says that Mrs Moffat was their housekeeper in the time of Mr Bennet.

Just as it is inconceivable that Mrs Bennet would have discussed in mixed company how to ensure a son (and if she knows a sure means, how come she has only 5 girls?) it is even more inconceivable that Lady C would admit to having a difficult birth with Anne, never mind to a male of inferior rank such as Mr Collins.

(Something that has always puzzled me in P&P is how Longbourn could have come to be entailed to someone who, having a different surname, must have been related to Mr Bennet in the female line?)

According to JA, none of the Bennet sisters draws - yet ET's Mrs Bennet tells Mary to pack her paints! Similarly, in 'P&P' Anne de Bourgh's health prevents her learning to play the piano, while Georgiana is an accomplished player. Yet acording to ET, after only a year of study Anne's prowess is such that she can contemplate a comparison with Georgiana!

Et says that Lydia is to come north and take a house at Rowsley. JA says that Lydia went to live in the north, at Newcastle - so she would have to come south to Derbyshire.

ET also says that Lydia would stay with Aunt Gardiner at Rowsley - but JA never mentions Rowsley; Aunt Gardiner lives in London; and the town visited by the Gardiners and Elizabeth is Lambton.

ET also has Elizabeth plan to go to Aunt Phillips in London - but Aunt Phillips lives in Meryton.

At one time ET says Wickham had lured Georgiana to Ramsgate, and at another that he abducted her to Ramsgate. JA's version is that Wickham took advantage of Georgiana being in Ramsgate to try to seduce her.

According to ET, Mr Gardiner was able to pursue his interest in salmon fishing during his Christmas visit - but she also has Miss Bingley point out that winter is not the season for salmon!

According to JA, the sum settled on Mrs Bennet was £5000. ET gives it as £4000.

Mr Collins asserts that there is always a ball at Pemberley at New Year. How does he know? He only met Darcy a couple of years before, and had never heard of him or of Pemberley before that.

He also thinks that Col Kitchiner may have been to Rosings - which, given Lady C's contempt for all Mrs Bennet's connections, is highly implausible.

Mrs Bennet tells Kitty that Darcy had been most generous to Wickham. How did she know? And since when has Mrs B been the voice of sweet reason?

Lady C expresses surprise that anyone who pleases can make a trip to Pemberley. Yet JA has Elizbeth and the Gardiners do precisely that in 'P&P'.

What, by the way happened to the Gardiner children? Would ET not allow them to visit Pemberley at Christmas with their parents?

And what about Colonel Fitzwilliam? Surely he should have been invited?

ET has Lady C say that Darcy detests children, and that for this reason she was not in favourof Anne marrying him, because Anne will have Rosings to pass down. Yet in 'P&P' the marriage of Darcy and Anne is Lady C's main objective! Indeed she regards them as betrothed since birth.

ET's Wickham claims to have led an exemplary life 'for many years now' - yet this is only 17 months after he eloped with Lydia!

ET has little Emily go to Whitby for sea air. In January??

These are just some of the many inconsistencies and silly errors which make this book so detestable. I have given it one star only because there is no option to give it none.

Don't bother reading it - and don't bother with the continuation, which is just as bad.

I saw this book advertised in a catalog and was excited to see a "sequel" to P&P. I was seriously disappointed after reading it however, when I discovered that the personalities of most of the characters were changed dramatically (and not for the better). Elizabeth, the heroine of P&P who is a strong and intelligent young woman is reduced to a whiny, wimpy, angst-ridden hand wringer. The cover of the book claims that it is "authentic and convincing" as a sequel, but it is simply BAD.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a married man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a son and heir." And that is how Pemberley, Emma Tennant's sequel to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, begins. The opening sentence drew me to the novel. I liked the throwback of Austen's opening sentence of P&P and thought it was quite clever... that is until I noticed that Tennant does this throughout the whole novel. I became annoyed with that, but that wasn't the worst part of this novel. More on that later. This sequel centers on family and friends gathering at Pemberley for Christmas. There are the worries centered on Mrs. Bennett and how she and her silly younger daughters would behave during their stay. Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth also have to worry about Lydia and Mr. Wickham and Lady Catherine de Bourgh. And there are, of course, the (very predictable) conflicts centered on Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth's inability to have a child. And to make things worse for them, Mr. Darcy may be -- gasp! -- the father of an illegitimate child!

I know this has very likely been brought up in other reviews, but I feel I have to vent. First of all, Jane and Elizabeth got married on the same day. There is a one-year time lapse in this installment. Why is it that Jane has a one-year-old little girl (when in fact this child should have been a newborn if it had been conceived during their honeymoon) and is about to give birth to another child? All in one year?! Then there is Lydia. She married Wickham a few months before Jane and Lizzy got married. And she has four children of various ages. Am I missing something here? Newsflash for Ms. Tennant: only animals could have multiple pregnancies in one year. Then there is the complete destruction of our beloved characters. Lizzy is an emotional disaster and a pushover here, throwing tantrums and crying at everything. There isn't the slightest trace of the intelligent, spirited and witty Lizzy that we all know and love. And Mr. Darcy? Tennant turns him into a pompous, brooding jerk. He may have been arrogant in P&P, but we all know that he gains some humility by the end and we also learn that underneath that arrogant exterior lies an honorable gentleman. But here we're back to square one and then some. And -- oh! -- Georgiana hates Lizzy? She teams up with Miss Bingley to speak ill of Lizzy behind her back and make her life miserable? What the hell? In Pride and Prejudice, Georgiana is a shy, proper young woman who likes Lizzy the moment she meets her. Tennant has reduced this character to a villainess in a bad soap opera. Ick! Mr. Bingley is once again trashed and turned into a rake of sorts (I say once again because this was done to him in another P&P sequel I recently read). He is the father of an illegitimate child in this one (remember the out-of-wedlock child that is believed to be Mr. Darcy's I mentioned in my previous paragraph?). I also hate the fact that the author kills off one of my favorite characters: Mr. Bennett. Why, oh why did the author get rid of such a wonderful and hilarious character? His bantering with Mrs. Bennett were my favorite parts of Pride and Prejudice. Anyway, I could go on forever with the inconsistencies and lack of continuity in this novel (and believe me, there's more!), so I'll move on to anachronisms. Regency women did not talk about douche among themselves during tea time, much less in front of men. And even though Mrs. Bennett could be quite vulgar and blunt, not even she would give advice on how to conceive a son in the company of men. And how would she know about conceiving a son? She has five daughters and no sons! Furthermore, this novel did not have a feel of Regency England at all. And all of this, dear readers, in just 184 pages! I'd hate to think what other errors this author would have concocted had she made this novel longer. I could only reach the conclusion that Ms. Tennant has never read Pride and Prejudice. As for using similar quotes from P&P... well, maybe she found them in Cliffs Notes or something. Pemberley wouldn't have been so bad if she had intended to rewrite the original novel and not do a continuation of it (that still wouldn't explain the multiple births in one year though). This novel is just plain bad. Don't waste your time with it. *End of venting.* Phew! I feel better now.

IF you *hate* Jane Austen. Having read Pemberly, one can only conclude that Ms Tennant may, perhaps, have *heard* of Pride and Prejudice, but she most certainly has not read it.

The sheer number of inconsistancies is amazing. How Jane and Bingley can have a one year old child, and be expecting a second, all within the first year of marriage is perplexing. What, exactly, is Ms Tennant trying to imply about Jane's virtue before marriage? Furthermore, Lydia, married only a few months before her sisters, is already the mother of four! Mrs Bennet prattles on about- oh the horror- douching at a meal with Darcy, as if any woman of the time would do such a thing! The Gardiners stay in an inn at Christmas, when Austen clearly states that they were invited to stay at Pemberly during visits. The list goes on, and on, and on.......

The plot is so silly, it seems to have been stolen from a harlequin romance. Or perhaps that is too great an insult to those romances. Brief summary: Elizabeth can't concieve, she thinks Darcy has an illegitimate child(?!), woe! woe! angst! Elizabeth thinks of running away, Jane gets sick, Elizabeth stays. Then, in the last dozen pages: Jane gets better! the child turns out to be Bingley's! Elizabeth, who faints into Darcy's arms, turns out to pregnant! All is well- rejoice! Further, the stilted dialogue and trite prose fail to capture Austen's sparkling style and Tennant's attempt to add authenticity by bastardizing phrases from the original book fail miserably.

But this book's worst crime is that the characters, whom we so love, become perfect strangers to us. It is true that a man can not change overnight, even with the love of a good woman. But by the end of P&P at Darcy had at least gained some humility and self-awareness. The Darcy in Pemberly is an unreasonable tyrant and nothing like the rational, honorable gentleman that Elizabeth, and we, fell in love with.

Then there is Elizabeth. Here Ms. Tennant provides unintentional commedy, as some of the emotional melodrama brings to mind the scenes in P&P with Mrs Bennet, right after Lydia runs away. Truth be told, it is *not* Elizabeth, not *our* beloved Lizzy, who inhabits Peberley's pages. That snivelling, weak, irrational creature bears no resemblance to our strong, intelligent, capable Elizabeth. Where Lizzy was witty and lively, that caricature is merely silly, where Lizzy was honest, bold and forthright, it is weak, vaccillating and secretive. Surely our Lizzy would have had the courage to just confront her husband with her questions?

No, if you love the gem that is Pride and Prejudice, do not waste your money on this work, whose only redeeming quality, is its excellent properties as kindling at a camp fire.

I'm going to be kind and sympathetic and give this book two stars. At least the author made an effort (but unfortunately didn't succeed.) I checked this book out at the library in great anticipation, because I love Pride and Prejudice and I wanted to read more! However, this book was a great disappointment. The style was not anything like Austen's and the characters were greatly changed. Elizabeth was reduced to the state of a jealous fool and Darcy - my dear Darcy! He seemed cold and unloving. The only character I liked at all in this book was Emily - the little daughter of Jane and Charles Bingley. She at least was innocent and unspoiled - the own author's creation. If you want to read a sequal that stays truer to the book, read Desire and Duty. It's not perfect (no sequal written by another author ever is) but I enjoyed it much better and the happenings seemed more likely. Or better yet, (if you, like me, loved the movie Pride and Prejudice) read the "scenes left out from Pride and Prejudice" on a Colin Firth fan page called the "Colin-y". Now those stories are truly delightful!

Ms. Tennant announces herself a descendant of Ms. Austen by a half-brother, which I guess makes her think that she has the right to totally destroy the memory of a wonderful novel as "Pride and Prejudice". She has totally taken Elizabeth Bennet and changed her personality from a confident, tender person to a total blubbering, irritating, melodramatic, and foolish child. If this alone did not completely make this reading a bewilderment, then her rendition of Mr. Darcy as dark, unfathomable, callous, immature, boorish, ego maniac will!

The inconsistency of this novel is absurd. She had Jane, who was married just one year before this story takes place and at the same time as Elizabeth, with one child and another due any minute. She states that the first child, a girl, is running and playing with a doll house her dad made for her in their barn (Mr. Bingley???)! This is particularly peculiar because even if Jane had conceived a child on her honeymoon, the child would still only be about 3 months old and Jane is not only with another child but this child is due any minute! WOW all in 1 year, the math here adds up to 19 months at the least!

She also overlooked the fact that Elizabeth was taking long walks and taking her family on walks to see the grounds of Pemberley, miles, the day before Christmas (in the snow?). There is no mention of snow the day before Christmas, however, her guests get stuck at Pemberley because of the deep snow the very next day and cannot leave Pemberley for their homes; albeit, Mr. Darcy can leave for London on that very day with no problem at all.

Again her is someone who I doubt even read "Pride and Prejudice" or her own novel before presenting it to the public? Did she have an editor and what was the publisher thinking? Did they read her novel before publishing it?

Do not waste you time on this silly tripe!

This is the first P&P sequel I've read, and I don't think I'll read another thanks to this book. It starts out well enough: basically all of Lizzy and Darcy's closest relations are invited to Pemberley for the Christmas season. For a while, the characters are true to Jane Austen's depiction of them in Pride and Prejudice, but the story goes downhill before you know it. It becomes completely ridiculous and inconceiveable. Lizzy is robbed of her wit and independence, which makes her simply annoying.

I ended the book feeling annoyed and resentful that the characters that I love had been completely destroyed.

This ghost of a sequel is not up to par. I'm sure, if she had changed the names of all the characters, that it would have made a fine discount rack book, however, she chose to pollute the book which has become a classic AND a favorite to many people.

The Author has no imagination either. The plot is a sadistic copy of the orginal book, including stolen quotes from the book, played by characters that resemble nothing from the book. Sometimes, it seems she just adds in characters because they were in P&P. What a coincidence that Pemberley happens to be entailed, to a cousin whom Darcy has little aquaintance with, and surprise, surprise - Mary Bennet falls in love with his cousin too. Seems to remind me of a Longborne, Mr. Collins, and Mary being able to tolerate Mr. Collins from P&P...but I could be wrong.

The final line is to not buy this book. And if you're captivated in the fact that this book has so many horrible reveiws and that you must read it to see if they are true- Then go to your local library and check it out, because money should not be waisted on this book, not even an overdue fine!

Thanks to the warning here, I didn't buy the book. A copy was given to me and I was prepared for some bad writing. But I've read some pretty mediocre Jane Austen spinoffs and thought I could stomach it.

How wrong I was! It took only a few pages to realize exactly how ridiculously bad the book was. The characters names may have been retained, but nothing else. The chronology is completely messed up. The characters behaved nothing like their Pride and Prejudice selves. The entire book is an exercise in sloppy character assasination, against some of the most beloved characters in all of literature.

Truly, Ms. Tennant, have you no shame?