A Review of Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindl

This book has been compared to I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, and it does have a similar voice. But I am also reminded of books like Tom Angleberger’s Horton Halfpott: Or, The Fiendish Mystery of Smugwick Manor; or, The Loosening of M'Lady Luggertuck's Corset, not to mention Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. There’s a droll, tongue-in-cheek feel to this book. Keeping the Castle is a parody of Pride and Prejudice and other, lesser Regency-era romances, but it also draws on Cinderella and any book you may have read in which the female main character is far more pragmatic than her plot might imply.

As our story begins, it’s a beautiful  spring morning and lovely narrator Althea is walking in the castle garden with a young man who is about to make her an offer of marriage.

     “I love you, Althea—you are so beautiful,” murmured the young man into my ear.     Well, I was willing enough. I looked up at him from under my eyelashes. “I love you too,” I confessed. I averted my gaze and added privately, “You are so rich.”

Unfortunately, she murmurs the words just under her breath, and the young man has sharp hearing. He is immediately offended. Althea explains that it’s a pretty sensible tradeoff, her looks for his money. When he asks if she would stop loving him if he lost all his money, she responds readily:

     “If I became ill,” I countered, “so that my hair fell out in clumps and my skin was covered with scabs and I limped, would you still love me?”     “Egad!” He stared at me, evidently attempting to picture this. He turned a little green.

The discussion goes downhill from there as the suitor tells her that when a young man admires a woman’s beauty it’s an artistic, spiritual thing, but when a woman admires a man’s money “it is mercenary and shows a cold heart.” The no-longer-a-suitor leaves in a huff.

Hmm, Althea thinks, didn’t like him much anyway. Now who can I snag? We learn that the castle is a fake castle, a monstrosity her foolish grandfather built perilously on the edge of a cliff. The place is falling apart. Althea and her mother want to rebuild it for her four-year-old brother because it’s all that’s left of the family fortune. In order to do that, Althea must marry into money.

In fact, for you English majors out there, the fake, falling-down castle makes a good metaphor for all of the artificiality inherent in a system of genteel poverty, aristocratic morning visits, and social hierarchy. Kindl skewers these things gleefully, especially the morning visits. When wave upon wave of neighbors descend on Althea’s household, she resorts to reusing the tea leaves, toasting the last bit of stale bread, and sending the scullery boy out to fish for minnows in the moat. The aristocrats’ names are also in for a fine bit of mockery.

Kindl throws in two selfish stepsisters straight out of Cinderella. Prudence and Charity try to hide Althea’s beauty from any young men they might encounter. They are the only ones in the family with any money at all, so they try to out-dress Althea, too, with mixed results. One of them even borrows a little from one of my favorite parts of Huck Finn:

[Prudence] was the elder, with a broad, flat face and figure, and few pretensions to beauty. Her favorite pastime was collecting quotations on the subject of death and mortality. She wrote them out in an elegant hand, decorated them with sketches of weeping willows and mourning urns, bound them up in an album labeled “Memento Mori,” and then gloated over them. “He seemed in a bit of a hurry. I trust you did not chase him away with that indiscreet tongue of yours, Althea.”

I particularly liked reading about how Althea goes to elaborate lengths to wring money out of her stepsisters.

Then there are the newly arrived young men in the neighborhood: sweet, handsome, Lord Boring (yes, Boring!) and his rude cousin, Mr. Fredericks. Althea sets her sights on Lord Boring, but then Mr. Fredericks seems to take an interest in her. Though the author hints rather broadly that Boring doesn’t actually have the money, Fredericks does, Althea is oblivious for much of the book. Mr. Fredericks is far more ill-mannered and abrupt than, say, Mr. Darcy, but he is clearly the man for Althea. As he himself eventually points out, he and Althea should marry because they like quarreling with each other. As for Lord Boring, he is just as wimpy but not nearly as reliable as Austin’s Bingley.

Althea really does remind me of Stella Gibbons’ Flora in that she is not greedy, ambitious, or unkind, simply highly practical. And though she does misjudge Mr. Fredericks a la Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, she certainly has her reasons.

The humor in this book is at its height in the early chapters, after which the laughs are more occasional. But it’s fun to read a spoof of a favorite genre, and Kindl remains witty, if not hilarious, to the end—when, rather than kissing Althea, Fredericks shakes her hand, well pleased with her response to his proposal.

Keeping the Castle is a cheery, entertaining read from the author of other wonderful books including Owl in Love and the fairy tale sendup, Goose Chase. Recommended with a grin and even a guffaw.

A Review of Jane Austen: A Life Revealed by Catherine Reef

Reading this book reminded me just of my favorite biography of Shakespeare, Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage. In a slim volume, Bryson basically explains that we know hardly anything about the bard himself. He provides the scraps of information we do have plus some nice historical context, then spends the rest of the book debunking common assertions that many believe to be facts. For example, it turns out none of the supposed portraits of Shakespeare can be authenticated in the least.

Even though she lived a few hundred years later, when better records were kept, Jane Austen left behind surprisingly scant information other than her novels themselves—though heaven knows, we're all grateful for that!

Still, Reef stitches together what is known and creates a surprisingly pleasing piece of needlework. We learn about the various members of Austen's family, things she said as quoted by family members, places she moved and when, and impressions of her from cousins and acquaintances, including those who disliked her.

It would have been wonderful to have her letters, of course, but her sister and other family members deliberately destroyed them after her death.

The author points out that Jane's books seem to give us a different impression of the woman than her family's descriptions of her, but then, there's a long tradition of not speaking ill of the dead. And perhaps Jane saved her finest, even edgiest wit, for her books rather than her conversations. Here's the passage I'm thinking of:

Her family described Jane Austen to the world as they wanted her to be remembered. "Her sweetness of temper never failed," wrote her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. "Faultless herself, as nearly as human nature can be, she always sought, in the faults of others, something to excuse, to forgive or forget," wrote her brother Henry. Added one of her nieces, "I do not suppose she ever in her life said a sharp thing."

Not ever? It is hard to believe that such a sweet, forgiving creature would write lines such as these:

I do not want people to be very Agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?

Mrs. Allan was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them.

The other portraits Reef paints are of Austen's books—plot summaries, when each was written, what Jane said about them, if anything, and comments made in family correspondence about how the writer's nearest and dearest felt about each one. For example, Reef tells us what her family thought of Austen's most universally admired book. Recall that in Austen's day, it was considered slightly scandalous for a woman to write a book, so it was usually kept quiet, with the book being published under a pen name.

The Austens all liked Pride and Prejudice. Jane read the book aloud to her niece Fanny Knight, who was often at Chawton. "[Aunt Jane] & I had a delicious morning together," Fanny noted in her diary. Charles Austen wrote that some of his naval-officer friends had read and enjoyed it. Jane tried to confine knowledge of her authorship to family and close friends, but word was getting out. "The Secret has spread so far as to be scarcely the Shadow of a secret now!" she wrote to Frank Austen. Their brother Henry had the toughest time keeping mum. More than once, Jane continued, Henry has heard people praise Pride and Prejudice, "& what does he do in the warmth of his Brotherly vanity and Love, but immediately tell them who wrote it!"

Readers who are familiar with Austen's work may feel impatient upon encountering Reef's summaries of the novels, but the intended teen audience is likely to appreciate the way these tie the chronology of Austen's life as a writer together.

Reef also includes a number of relevant images, ranging from the only known portrait of Jane (supposedly a poor likeness) to a still from the Keira Knightley P&P. The author threads her account with notes about the culture and the era, all of which make it that much easier to understand Jane. She explains, for instance, how much the Georgians loved Bath—although Jane did not. And she describes the etiquette required from a young woman dealing with a suitor before noting that "Jane and [one-time suitor] Tom skirted the rules of decorum, attracting the attention of their elders."

I very much enjoyed getting a better picture of Jane Austen, the person, as I read Catherine Reef's clear, pleasant account (155 pages plus references). For anyone who loves Pride and Prejudice—the book or the movie—and certainly for the older child or teen doing an author report on this famous writer, Jane Austen: A Life Revealed, is a book worth reading.

A Retro Review of Sorcery and Cecilia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

This book has been around since 1988, but it has since been reprinted. In case you're thinking that's a long title, there's even more: the subtitle is actually "being the correspondence of two Young Ladies of Quality regarding various Magical Scandals in London and the Country."

Sorcery and Cecilia is an epistolary novel, a fantasy, a romance, and a suspense novel. It fairly percolates of Jane Austen. Hmm, perhaps "seeps" would be a better verb, since there's an awful lot of tea drinking here, relieved only by a little of the titular hot chocolate.

Cecilia Rushton is stuck at Rushton Manor in Essex, while her cousin Kate is in London experiencing a high ton season with her sister, the lovely and self-centered Georgina. There is gossip of clothes and parties in their letters, but also of the mysterious marquis of Schofield and a neighbor honored by the Royal College of Wizards. This isn't Jane Austen's England, after all, although it's a close match except for the wizards!

Pretty soon Kate is stumbling into a hidden garden and nearly suffering death by hot chocolate, escaping with nothing more than a hole through her skirt where the chocolate touched it. And Cecilia is rolling her eyes at the sight of every boy in the district falling in love with a girl named Dorothea. When they figure out that the woman with the chocolate pot is the same Miranda who is the terrifying mother of Dorothea, Kate and Cecilia rightly suspect a plot.

Meanwhile, Cecilia comes across a boy named James Tarleton spying rather ineptly in the bushes, and Kate meets Thomas Schofield, the mysterious marquis himself, who proposes an engagement-of-convenience while he does his own spying on Miranda and her ally Sir Hilary Bedrick. Neither of the boys takes the girls very seriously, unaware that Cecilia and Kate are beginning to tackle the villains themselves, armed with magical charm bags and elegant society manners.

Then Kate is nearly turned into a tree and her cousin Oliver, Cecilia's brother, disappears. The chocolate is getting very hot, indeed!

This comedy of manners in letters is an intelligent book, one that will be appreciated by reader who like Jane Austen and perhaps Diana Wynne Jones. TV-brained readers might feel impatient at its relatively slow pace, but others will enjoy its slow build and the clever little twists, not to mention the way the book turns the traditional regency romance on its head by the introduction of magic and two strong-minded girls.

And, as you might guess, James is falling for Cecilia and Thomas is falling for Kate, though it takes the four of them quite a while to figure that out! The romance doesn't overpower the storytelling; it just adds spice.

About the only dull bit in this book is the explanation of the spells wrought by the villains. Otherwise, I think you'll find it a delightful read for a summer afternoon—preferably in conjunction with a delicate rose-patterned teacup filled with Earl Grey tea.

Note that the authors have written two sequels, The Grand Tour and The Mislaid Magician or Ten Years After. These are likable, if not quite as good as the first book. I recently reviewed a new spin-off by Stevermer, Magic Below Stairs.

Jane Gets a Makeover

I was making my rounds through a bookstore the other day, scanning the YA (teen) shelves, when my eyes were caught by another imitation-Twilight cover, stark black with a passionate red rose and a couple of white roses hovering behind. I picked it up, expecting to see a title along the lines of Fangs in the Night or My Brooding Werewolf Lover.

But the book was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. With a teaser phrase on the front in all caps: "THE LOVE THAT STARTED IT ALL." The back jacket let me know that there are two more books in this set, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, AKA "LOVE NEVER DIES," and Romeo and Juliet, "THE ORIGINAL FORBIDDEN LOVE."

Just so we're clear, what this means is that Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, and William Shakespeare are jumping on the Twilight bandwagon—courtesy of HarperTeen. (This edition of Pride and Prejudice is ranked #7,707 in sales on Amazon today, not a bad number, really. FYI, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight is currently ranked #121 in Amazon sales. In terms of total sales, Twilight is catching up fast, with more than 17 million to P&P's 20 million.)

So how does Pride and Prejudice stack up against Twilight? Yes, thousands of women just howled in outrage, sounding like Taylor Lautner in full fur. But read on...

We've got Elizabeth vs. Bella, for starters. Elizabeth is a little older and has way more confidence. She spends most of the book irked at Mr. Darcy and only gradually relents, overcome by a growing awareness of her mistaken assumptions, as well as by Mr. Darcy's unexpected gallantry and his really gorgeous mansion. Bella, for her part, is addicted to Edward Cullen almost from the get-go and is pretty self-effacing, even self-deprecating.

Mr. Darcy vs. Edward? No contest. Mr. Darcy outbroods Edward Cullen and Robert Pattinson put together, and without being melodramatic. Each hero is capable of leaping into the fray to help his ladylove, but Mr. Darcy sacrifices his famous pride on the altar of Elizabeth, humbling himself to aid his enemy Mr. Wickham for her sake. Edward merely beats up a vampire and manages not to drink all of Bella's blood.

As for wit and fine writing, craftsmanship and subtle humor... No, I can't go on. I'm starting to howl like Taylor Lautner. Let's just state the obvious: Jane Austen is a really, really good writer.

Having gotten a kick out of seeing these new editions, I walked a few steps farther and came across a Marvel Comics version of Pride and Prejudice which insisted on coming home with me. I'm not sure how you feel about graphic versions of classic literature—appalled? amused? But I was curious to see just what the adapter and illustrator had done with one of my favorite books ever.

Apparently this edition was originally published as a series of four comic books. The covers are nicely tongue-in-cheek, each set up to resemble a magazine cover. Fake article teasers used on the book jacket include "Lizzy on Love, Loss, and Living," "Bingleys Bring Bling to Britain," "17 Secrets about Summer Dresses," "How to Cure Your Boy-Crazy Sisters," and, of course, "Who Is Mr. Darcy?" Marvel has kindly included the other three jackets in the back of the book for your enjoyment. (I should warn you that the interior artwork does not look anything like the cover art.)

The oddest thing about this book is the front flap copy, which could have been highly entertaining, but isn't. Not a bit. It seems more like a super-condensed version of CliffsNotes, to tell you the truth, remarking on social relevance, major themes, and Austen's writing style. If the Marvel people were going to go there, they should have just thrown in a more detailed note at the back of the book.

I have to say, Nancy Butler does a very good job of picking out the best of Austen's wonderful dialogue and including it in this graphic adaptation. Think of the book as a movie. Like a movie, a graphic novel has to re-envision a novel as a series of scenes and preserve key dialogue while replacing description and action with visual images.

Presented in such a tight format, P&P does seem a little more soap opera-ish. This impression is aided by Hugo Petrus's artwork, which conforms to comic book conventions by giving almost every woman in the book, and certainly the Bennet sisters, surprisingly full lips for people living in an age prior to Botox. However, to Petrus's credit, he doesn't enhance anybody's breasts except maybe Mrs. Bennet's, and that suits her portrayal as a rather blowsy woman. The only moment that seems truly out of character and anachronistic here is when the artist shows Mr. Darcy holding Elizabeth in his arms (entirely off the ground, cheerleader-catch style) after he has re-proposed and she has accepted. Highly improper! But it's just the one frame, so I think I'll forgive the guy.

Petrus's palette is inclined towards browns and golds, a good match for the era. He manages to give the long dialogue scenes a surprisingly energetic feel by varying his compositions and showing characters' shifting emotions. The only thing that threw me off about the artwork was that in the fourth segment, Petrus's style seems to have changed—maybe he's using a different medium, or the printing method has changed, or he's simply using fewer lines to portray these characters.

As for the artist's rendering of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, I wasn't on board at first, but they grew on me. I imagine most of us have pictures in our heads of favorite literary characters, and these didn't match up for me. Still, once I got used to them, I rather liked them, Botox and all.

Another version of P&P that has been shelved in the YA section lately is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. I had such a good time writing my Amazon review of this book last year that I'll share it with you here:

Imagine a fifteen-year-old girl reading Pride and Prejudice. No, better yet, imagine her watching a DVD of Pride and Prejudice, preferably the one with Keira Knightley. Her best friend is plopped down beside her. They're eating low-fat microwave popcorn and sighing blissfully every so often, when suddenly the girl's younger brother shows up, along with his own best buddy.

The two boys look at the screen for about three seconds and say, "Gross!" Then, with an evil look, the first one says loudly, "You know what would make this better? If there were zombies in it."

"Yeah," his friend says, "hungry for brains. And that girl right there could be a kick-butt zombie fighter."

"Elizabeth Bennet?" the big sister says, appalled, yet vaguely charmed by the thought.

"Ha," her friend says, "she and Mr. Darcy could kick zombie butt together! That would be kinda romantic. In a disgusting way, I mean."

Just then Mr. and Mrs. Collins come on-screen. It doesn't take long for the boys to realize how boring they are. "That guy has to die," says the girl's brother.

"Yeah, and the girl could turn into a zombie," says his friend.

"Okay, you can shut up now," the fifteen-year-old tells the intruders. "We get it. You're funny."

But her brother isn't quite finished. "What this story needs the most is a lot of vomit. Because it makes me sick!"

Um, so, anyway—that's what this book is like. Just exchange the ten-year-old brother for a literate thirty-something screenwriter and you've got this hybrid, which is said to be 85% Jane Austen, 15% Seth Grahame-Smith.

What's most impressive is how smoothly the guy weaves his "unmentionables" and things like the Bennet sisters' martial arts training into the original text. Take this bit, for example:

"Upon entering Meryton...the eyes of the younger [Bennet] girls were immediately wandering up the street in quest of officers, and nothing less than a very smart bonnet indeed, or the wail of the undead, could recall them."

Then there's a parlor game that's all the rage—Crypt and Coffin. Or the fact that London is a walled city divided into military enclaves in order to deal with the zombie menace. Elizabeth's favorite aunt and uncle live in Section Six East, just in case you were wondering.

One thing Grahame-Smith has fun with is letting Elizabeth and her sisters' combat training render them rather bloodthirsty, especially in response to the most irritating characters in the book:

"To the girls, who could not listen to their cousin [Mr. Collins] without taking a silent inventory of the countless ways they could kill him, the interval of waiting appeared very long."

Grahame-Smith also gives Mr. Wickham a much more severe comeuppance than Austen ever did. And Elizabeth gets into angry martial arts face-offs with, not only Mr. Darcy himself, but Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Austen's "co-author" occasionally misses a beat when it comes to having other characters respond normally to his additions, and he gets a bit carried away with the vomit, but I have to admit, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is remarkably clever in its own little rotting-flesh way.

Of course, the greatest irony of all is that avowed anti-snob Seth Grahame-Smith has a name that makes him sound like he'd fit in nicely with Darcy and Bingley's elegant London crowd.

Now, zombies aside, what do you think about that phrase on the imitation-Twilight book jacket of the latest edition of Pride and Prejudice? Is this book really "The Love that Started it All?" Well, HarperTeen's other title, Romeo and Juliet, came long before Austen's book and arguably defined star-crossed lovers for all time. Which makes it a better comparison to Twilight, actually! (Hm. How many of you just howled like a drunken Elizabethan?) As for Pride and Prejudice, let's just say that every romance novel written in the past century or so and every rom-com ever filmed, particularly the ones with the slightest hint of initial dislike between hero and heroine or any sort of witty banter, owes a big fat thank you to Ms. Austen. With or without that black cover adorned by a bloody-looking rose.