Customer Reviews

Vanity and Vexation: A Novel of Pride and Prejudice

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This was such a fun book to read. It is the story of "Pride and Prejudice" in our time period. So if you are looking for a book that carries on the Regency style period and Jane Austen's style of writing this is not it! I recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed watching or reading Bridget Jones's Diary. It is similar to BJD in the language mostly. One, the author uses profanity occasionally and Two, some words or phrases may be hard to understand if you are not British or in this case Welsh.

The author did a fantastic job of not only bringing Pride and Prejudice to the 21st Century but also inverting all the character's genders. Can you imagine the proud, arrogant Mr. Darcy as a woman? You will find character traits of Elizabeth Bennet in the mystery thriller novelist Nick Bevan and Mr. Darcy with film director Mary Hamilton. Also it is hilarious to spot others like Lady Catherine and Mrs. Bennet in the opposite gender roles.

This book will test your knowledge of "Pride and Prejudice" with its many parallels. You can compare what you know from "Pride and Prejudice" and discover that the author used it and reversed it in her story.

It was a wonderful read, I enjoyed the author's intelligent writing. I personally wish she did not include profanity but I wasn't turned off by the use of it. Nevertheless, it was a very funny, entertaining, and intelligent story of "Pride and Prejudice" in the 21st Century with the genders switched.

Vanity and Vexation reads very quickly. I read it in a day while home with a cold. The dialog is glib and sometimes witty and things sail along pretty well, but there are some aspects that leave one feeling flat when all is said and done. I finished the book, with a "that's it?" feeling.

The transposition of the Pride and Prejudice plot and characters to 20th century Yorkshire worked for me. The Bennet contingent consists of the town locals, and the Darcy/Bingley group are the film company and cast who are in town to shoot the outdoor location shots for a television remake of P&P. Kate Fenton reverses the sexes of all the major characters. This worked for some but not for others. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet become the owners of the pub in the Yorkshire town. Bernard is behind the bar, not too swift, sometimes annoying, and lacking in tact. Sarah his wife runs the attached restaurant which serves gourmet, not pub, food. She is very sharp and isn't above making fun of her husband. I had no problem with them, nor with the Bingley sisters becoming the two lead actors in the film. Caroline Bingley's character becoming a narcissistic actor who thinks no one is as clever or attractive as he is, is quite good. Even Charles Bingley becoming Candia, the beautiful, flighty, but good tempered lead actress of the film was a successful switch.

The Darcy-Elizabeth reversals were a problem. Darcy becomes Mary, the film's director, and Elizabeth is Nick, a critically acclaimed, but not best-selling, novelist. Fenton tries to swing the Darcy pride onto Mary while keeping her likable enough to accept as the hero, and I didn't buy it. Mary is driven as a director for her art by her ambition, and that is why she treats people like dirt, but yet that's OK because it was for her art. Well, it wasn't OK; she was just a pain, and not even an interesting pain; nor does she ever see the light and mend her ways as Austen did to Darcy. Nick, could have been a genius in the newspaper biz, but he left for a more relaxed life as an author. He's funny and sharp-witted, but but basically just wants to drink with his mates and write enough to stay afloat. How Mary and Nick are ever supposed to be interested in each other as a couple I could never figure out. There's no chemistry, I mean zero chemistry, between them. And therein lay the fatal flaw of the book for me. Fenton's writing was fine, her minor characterizations were fun, and the Charles Bingley/Jane romance worked in Fenton's hands, but the Elizabeth/Darcy romance was a bust.

"Vanity and Vexation" is not a sequel to "Pride and Prejudice" but rather a clever and entertaining retelling of some of the plot elements of that story with a very definite 21st century twist. Though clearly any reader who is familiar with Jane Austen's novel will get a kick out of figuring out how Kate Fenton has produced her own unique version, that should not deter others from reading it. It is a story that can be enjoyed on many different levels.

This is a really clever page turner. Apparently, it was written for the intelligent Jane Austen fan, who appreciates a modern, witty take on a beloved story. It is written with tongue in cheek, but is respectful of the primary source. Kate Fenton, who has written other good books that were published in England, has written a story with wit, surprises and an appreciation of Jane Austen for modern readers. I loved it!

I enjoyed this book, but be forewarned, it is the same book that was published before as 'Lions and Liquorice' in the UK. I had ordered in a few years ago from amazon.uk

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book but found it an amusing twist on the tale. The gender-reversal was a little confusing at the beginning. I am not sure we are ever engaged enough with the main characters to fall in love with them as we do in the original book. I have to agree with another reviewer here who says "How Mary and Nick are ever supposed to be interested in each other as a couple I could never figure out". This may be chauvinistic, but by reversing the genders but keeping the demeanors I am not sure that realistically, they would have been attracted to each other. Mary, the Darcy character, does not have an epiphany and go through a transformation as Darcy does in the original book or if she does, this fact is not dwelled upon much.

In spite of some of these issues, I would still very much recommend this book as a good, fun read and an intelligent take on modern-day society where celebrity has replaced nobility.

An enjoyable summer read. The story follows the making of a movie version of Jane Austin's "Pride & Prejudice" and a contemporary parallel with reversed gender roles. Well written and entertaining.

The writing is very crisp, funny, and often surprisingly romantic, making this a very worthwhile update of P&P. The characters are expertly fleshed out and the book never felt gimmicky to me, either. There's also a great deal of wit and intelligence in the writing, making this a book you'll want to savor rather than devour in one sitting. I loved Nick, warmed to Mary (as I was supposed to) and also enjoyed all the supporting characters. This is a light read, but it also has depth, so I didn't feel dissatisfied at the end.

I am stunned at the great reviews I read for this book. I was expecting so much more. Instead, I found it disjointed as a story and the characters not particularly intriguing at all. I grew very weary of the saturation of alcohol, tobacco and foul language. Jane Austen would never have presented her characters in such a crude fashion. Being blindsided in the middle of the book with the "novel within a novel" twist and I felt like JR just woke up from another dream. Add to all this the obscure literary references sprinkled throughout and you've got, in Ms. Fenton, an author who, not only can't find an original idea, but she appears to have an ego to rival that of the Bingley sisters. The modernization of Pride & Prejudice should have ended with Bridget Jones. Vanity and Vexation is just another cheap attempt to capitalize on Jane Austen's name.

As to the claim that those of us who are giving an opinion on this book are not understanding that "this is not Austen and doesn't claim to be" so, therefore, are unqualified to use this analogy - all I can say is that if an author doesn't want to be compared to Jane Austen then they shouldn't rip off her stories and include the words "Pride & Prejudice" in the title.

Has to do with a film version of the novel being made in a small British town and the impact the influx of movie stars upon said quaint town. The originality of this P&P-inspired novel is the gender reversal, which can be quite fun at times. Rather than a snobbish Mr. Darcy, we have the female film director. The gender swap definitely makes some elements of the plot line interesting. Definitely enjoyable when you're looking for some more Jane Austen in any form.