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Are you a fan of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen? It is certainly one of the greatest novels of the English language- one could argue that Austen created the Romance Genre with that one book. But a cottage industry has grown up in recent years of other authors writing novels to supplement or continue Elizabeth Bennett's life story- anything from murder mysteries to zombie adventures.
The latest effort in this area will be the forthcoming novel "Longbourn" by British author Jo Baker. Baker uses the fresh approach of working from the viewpoint of the servants at Longbourn. Elizabeth's story is unchanged; but it is made fuller by the addition of the servants and their life stories. Did Lizzie have indoor plumbing? No she did not, and Baker does a good job of explaining the endless, back-breaking work of the real Bennett household, required by the entertaining and somewhat pointless life of the Owner Class of early nineteenth century England. In some ways, the lords and ladies come off here as parasites- which is consistent with marry-well-or-be-damned thread in the original novel. Austen dealt with this as a simple fact of life, but from a modern point of view it is somewhat horrible.
To spice things up, Baker has a romance between two of the servants here. This romance is every bit as sigh-inducing as the original romance in Pride and Prejudice, if not more so. There are also complex secrets at work in the Longbourn household, which the reader gradually comes to understand over the course of the novel. In the end, Longbourn may not be the literary equal of Austen's original, but it is very much worth reading and can be expected to become standard book group fare in the coming year, due to the P&P connection and to its own merit. Publication date is set for October 8.
