Longbourn by Jo Baker (Book Beginnings & Friday 56)

  

Title: Longbourn

Author: Jo Baker

Publication: 8 October 2013

Format: Vintage Books

Amazon Description

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK • The servants take center stage in this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice.

While Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters fuss over balls and husbands, Sarah, their orphaned housemaid, is beginning to chafe against the boundaries of her class. When a new footman arrives at Longbourn under mysterious circumstances, the carefully choreographed world she has known all her life threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended. Mentioned only fleetingly in Jane Austen’s classic, here Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Regency England and, in doing so, uncovers the real world of the novel that has captivated readers’ hearts around the world for generations.

 

Ramble-y Teaserish Stuff

There was quite a long time that I shied away from any sort of Jane Austen "reimagining." Those days are quite obviously over and I am quite thrilled that at least one of my regular hotel guests knows me (and likes me) well enough to know that if they see something that has anything at all to do with Jane, it's worth at least mentioning to me. It comes in handy that his wife is also quite the prolific Austenite. She recently read Jo Baker's Longbourn ... and made sure that the husband in question not only mentioned it, but brought me her copy to read. 

This is definitely worth reading and savoring and, probably, not loaning out to anyone else so it can sit in my collection to be read and re-read (which is okay with the wife in question as she bought herself a hardcover as soon as he agreed to bring me the paperback).

Longbourn is a behind-the-scenes take on Pride & Prejudice -- or, more accurately, a below-the-stairs take. The Bennets et al from P & P are there, but they aren't the focus. Instead their housemaid Sarah is the heroine of the tale and she is well on her way to becoming one of my favorites and I'm not even half-way through.

 

(This week's "56" is from page 156 of the paperback.)

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Friday 56 (share a blurb from the 56th page or 56% mark) is hosted at Freda's Voice 

& Book Beginnings (share the first few sentences) is at Rose City Reader