Review: enjoyable, though a bit too clean
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 23, 2014
I was given a preview of this booklet through the publisher and it was good enough to keep me reading. I liked the last few pages, where we Darcy and Elizabeth meet in a coach.Before that we get a look into (this) Elizabeth's too perfect life. She is seriously politically correct, reading that era's feminist authors and negotiating with her dad for a London trip to get fabric for a new gown. If that isn't already far more modern than Austen wrote Lizzy, her friendship with Charlotte and new introduction Melanie (that name! way too modern) as a threesome of friends reminds me of my teen friendships - in an idealized way. For the early 19th century it's WAY out there. I mean, instead of gossiping about the neighborhood, these girls have a serious study group going. Can you imagine? Girls educated at home, with mothers who were hardly literate, in a culture in which girls were mostly ornaments?In fact, the whole book reads like it's an Austen clean up. What would you like your 19th century youth to have been like? Well, you'd want not just one, but two intelligent friends. You'd want to be ahead of your time and therefore up to date about the latest feminist authors.Still - as I said - all in all an enjoyable read.