PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: Annabella Bloom & Jane Austen

My suspicions should have been raised by the circular red balloon which reads The WILD &; WANTON edition,. published by Adams Media,  Shamelessly plagiarized by Bloom from the original by Jane Austen,  about ten pages of sexy encounter between Darcy and Elizabeth very near the end of the book have been added.  Lydia is portrayed as wanton and totally without scruples or morals in the early chapters, briefly.

The Jane Austen sequels which have been well written and original are take-offs on what might have been 'if' some other course was taken,k or they are set in another time period, or written in a way that clearly marks them as simply based on Jane Austen material but most is different and the story is made captivating.  Recently, some publishers decided to capture more of a market by renaming previously published books to include the Darcy name, reselling in the belief that the Darcy name in the title will pull in more readers.  Good authors have lost credibility by many of their readers who thought it a ploy of the author rather than the publisher and felt duped.

Excluding the original Austen P & P, I've now read 88 of these, skipping those others published in which Darcy is a Vampire or as equally unrelated to the Austen book.  For those of us who are true Austen fans, marketers/publishers need to understand they lose, not gain, readers with these tactics.  It is greedy, misleading,  damaging to good authors, and garners bad publicity for the publishers and sellers.  Readers, especially  those of us who buy the books, beware.  If you don't want to spend hours waiting for the book to be as it was advertised, you may end up almost  478 pages later feeling profoundly cheated  Steer clear of this one.


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CRY OF FOUL WHEN ROMANCE NOVELS DON'T FOLLOW THE FORMULA

Some of us read romance books because we like to sublimate to have our bodies and minds feel good. 

There are  formulas for a romance novel.  One definition is: "A romance novel is a work of prose fiction that tells a story of the courtship and betrothal of one or more heroines.:"  Formula is a subset of genre.  Silhouette suggests 50,000 words.  Category romance, very contemporary, fast paced, fun,flirtatious, entertaining, upbeat and sexy.  For those who wish to understand the genre and not necessarily have a plot to read and relax, I suggest buying A Natural History of the Romance Novel by Pamela Regis (who wrote it in true academic style, quite readable with excellent organization)

Pride and Prejudice was one of the earlier ones that has remained read by many readers today.  'What if...' books and sequels have sprung up.  While many provide interesting and enjoyable reading, none of the more than 70 I have now read surpass Jane Austen.  Clearly, many authors are capitalizing on her coattails and many are most enjoyable reading.

Recently I have read a few that sneak in a plot, occasionally move it along in between the history book under which it should be filed..  Other authors have spent more time describing, to give us mental images no doubt, of food, furnishings, gardens and clothing.  My fantasy is that these are written by people who are unable to get to a point without wandering off and editorializing so that the listener or reader's head has wandered off as far in the opposite direction.

Each writer elicits different emotional reactions for the reader.  If I wanted the carnage and violence of the Gladiators, I would not choose to read a romance novel, yet some authors add all that to the 'action'.  The appeal seems to be to all tastes from the stereotypical frail, dependent female who is dutiful and without courage- to the independent female who stands up to oppressive, bossy males even though it against the custom of the historical time.  Since it is a novel, the author can take great liberties with the characters, clearly against all research as to how people behave, given their makeup and the situation.

However, I enjoy many genres and any book that has a happy ending which has traditionally been an accepted rule of the romance novel.  Recently I read one listed as such in which the hero and heroine had been happily married but he gets murdered near the ending, leaving her widowed, with twins less than two years old, who will have to be brought up without their father.  If one is looking to feel good, this is not a book to read; it did nothing to perk me up.  Too many modern women are single mothers (even while married)...it is not fun and not the story within which one wants to be wrapped when looking to be cheered.

DO WE HAVE A PARALLEL WORLD?

From Wikipedia: The multiverse (or meta-universe) is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes (including our universe) that together comprise all of reality. The different universes within the multiverse are sometimes called parallel universes.

Twenty nine (29) versions of stories based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice have appeared before my eyes. Each has taken some dialogue and characters from the original but that is as far as the similarity seems to go. One seemed to be the same book in someone else's words. Some describe the sex life of Elizabeth and Darcy, which modest, unmarried Jane Austen (writing in the early 1800s) would never have written. Others are a sequel about the next generation. Whatever they may be, most of them are interesting and vary in how compelling is the reading expedience they induce. Some are, as my musician friends would have called, B-flat, or in another metaphor, 'vanilla'.

The above paragraph, somewhat descriptive of content, does nothing to describe what happens to this reader after reading 29 of them, (after the original), and several versions of movies that have been made over the years. (There are many more books to read.) It seems that movies took great liberties with the original, many of them made in the 80, 90s and this decade. License was not only taken with costuming, script, events in the book, but have taken on the movie interest's license. what will sell at the box office (in the mind of someone who has little knowledge, usually, of what that means. The story, while entertaining, barely resembles the original. Those of us who have read the book before the movie, first find that all too often to be the case; Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings being exceptions.

Finally, in order to keep straight in my mind what this particular version is about, I have taken to reading each one straight through in a day. This has not been at all easy to arrange. I start late in the evening and read during the night when I am undisturbed and suffer only the lack of sleep the next day. However, I can keep the details straight for that book until I am through.

Multiples have been written by a single author and each takes a different route.
Some books make their focus interesting on a 'what if....'. For example, if Elizabeth and Darcy had not left Hunsfield but had stayed there longer, what might it have been like? Impulse and Initiative is about Darcy not allowing himself to be stopped by her refusal, but seeking her out at Longbourn and trying to win her love and respect. These are the books that challenge my 'parallel world' thinking. There should be more than one way to deal with anything, should there not? Maybe in each parallel world all these things have a different outcome. What joy it would be to know some of the possibilities. This is what some of these authors whom I have disparaged as plagiarists, (with my apologies for not seeing the further merit of their attempt in writing),offer.

With the indulgence of my readers, I may comment again after reading the three that are yet unread in my possession.

A MASTER UNDER GOOD REGULATION

"This is the story of Pride and Prejudice as seen through the eyes of Reggie, Mr. Darcy's dog. Reggie has a keen perception of things going on around him and the story begins with Darcy as a young boy of 15, picking Reggie out from a litter. We see the two of them become close companions as Darcy grows up and enters the story of Pride and Prejudice that Jane Austen penned. But the story also takes you to those silent months and behind the scenes where Reggie has much on which to reflect, comment, and intervene. Visit "KaraLou's" website, Jane Austen's Land of Ahhhs;, www.ahhhs.net, to read additional stories by her."...description of the book by the author or publisher.

I have tried to read all the Pride and Prejudice spin-offs, but struggle with whether this one has just gone too far afield for even my obsession with Austen (or the cottage industry that has sprung up from the ability to plagiarize her original work). I admit that Pemberley's Promise, also by Kara Louise, was one of the best of the 26 that I have so-far read. She has also written a couple of others, one an altered Version of Pride and Prejudice (Assumed Engagement) and the second, (Assumed Obligation) a sequel to Assumed Engagement, as well as to Pride and Prejudice. These are now ordered and I will offer my unsolicited opinions on those, too, when I receive and have read them.




I would be interested in reading some feedback from others who are Austen fans. To leave a comment you need a gmail account. You can get a free gmail account by signing up at: http://www.google.com/, whether you ever use it for anything else or not. Otherwise, I'm not sure whether you can even leave an anonymous comment...a peculiarity of blogspot.

FOR JANE AUSTEN LOVERS

My blog writing didn't happen last night because I was rapt and wrapped last night in a fourth Elizabeth Aston book in the manner of Jane Austen. This one was The Darcy Connection. Disappointed that I had finished the Aston books as well as Austen, I found in Amazon that there is another Aston book in her series The Exploits and Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy: a Novel. While browsing there, I see that there is a whole cottage industry of writers capitalizing from Jane Austen. I ordered a few more to check them out, hoping (and reasonably sure) it will not dampen feelings about the original Austen.


Aston writes well. After the first that I read by her on the Darcy clan, she did a much better job at building her characters. However, one thing I noted (though she relies heavily on the format that Austen used) is that she has peppered her books with villains while Austen only used mean spirited characters. While there is one who might be called a villain, he was simply selfish and not really as determined to do the kind of evil Aston writes about in some of her characters. There are intrigues, misunderstandings, but less of the detail with which Austen described went through the heads of her characters. Nevertheless, Aston's books still qualify beautifully in the 'feel-good' category of books for readers who like to leave the last page with a nice warm feeling that the world is not such a bad place, after all.