Interestingly enough, I ended up (thanks to jet lag)
actually reading this book at midnight. And beyond. After months of pressing on through books
like Les Mis, Dante on Hell, The Letters of Samuel Rutherford, and Middlemarch,
just to name a few, it was an incredibly smooth ride to pick up a novel like
this and just breeze through it. I
forgot how easy reading could be. One of
the reasons I committed this year to finishing all the books I was half-way
through is that I have a great tendency to fly through books like this, easy
and fun reads, and to set aside the harder, more challenging ones.
So when my sister excitedly sent me a copy a few months ago,
I sighed and set it on the shelf for when I had finished all my half-started
books. After a few months in America
(and a lot of traveling), I returned with the aforementioned jet lag and
realised that I was ready to start a new book! Midnight in Austenland it was. I brewed a cup of Earl Grey (with a slice of
lemon, of course), and curled up on my favourite red sofa to read.
Novels based on Austen are a dime a dozen these days –
everyone fancies themselves an Austen fan, and a potential Austen writer. I liked that this book isn’t an Austen
wanna-be: the heroine lives in current times and has pretty normal
twenty-first-century problems (like going through a divorce, trying to stay
connected to her teenage children, and re-figuring out who she is as a person). But she loves Austen, and decides to take a
trip to England to visit some of the Austen sites. The opportunity arises to stay for two weeks
in a Pemberley-style house, dressing in the Regency style, living and speaking
and eating as in the Austen days.
I like her merging of a current-times mindset with a
past-times style of living. As any of us
would do, she disappears into historical times for the most part, every once in
a while wondering what she’s doing there and whether it is changing her life yet. As she arrives at the venue, she looks over
the landscape and wills it to help her, thinking to herself: “Come on, change
me. I dare you.” And later on, dressed
in full Regency style, she stares at herself in the mirror and wonders if the
change has begun. “Lately she’d become
the Divorced Woman. She’d let herself be defined by what James had done to her.
Now it was her chance to redefine things.
I choose this, she told the reflection. The reflection didn’t change.
She hoped it wouldn’t take its time. She only had two weeks.”
In some ways, the plot twists and turns surprised me a
little, if only because from the beginning I thought maybe, just maybe, this
would turn out to be one of those books that mirrors real life a little more
accurately. I have a feeling if I went
to Austenland for two weeks, I wouldn’t be nearly murdered (twice), solve a
centuries-old mystery, and fall in love to boot. And get a few other happy endings that I
won’t spoil for you. And sometimes I
almost wish that books like this went that route, so I don’t feel so bad that
my life doesn’t have the perfect happy ending in the middle of my days.
But then, that’s not why we read books like this. We read them for the exceptions, for the
fairy tales. We read them for inspiration
and remembering that, sometimes, people do get happy endings. The handsome man appears out of nowhere, the
relationship with children is restored, the woman who thought herself as plain
is actually quite beautiful. We all want
to be Cinderella (or Elizabeth Bennett, or Emma), and so we read – and write –
books like this.
So go on – have a read.
Curl up in your favourite chair, or couch, or bed, make yourself a
perfect cup of tea, don’t let anyone interrupt you, and get whisked away to
Austenland. After the day (or week, or
year) you have probably had, you could use a little fairy tale happiness.
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