Adaptation: Lost in Austen

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 and, almost 200 years later, readers are still invested in the story of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Earlier this summer, I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a bloody but amusing spin on the classic story. Now the Brits bring us the miniseries Lost in Austen, in which a modern woman walks through a portal straight into Elizabeth Bennet's home of Longbourne.

The woman is Londoner Amanda Price (Jemima Rooper), who loves nothing more than curl up at the end of the day with her copy of Pride and Prejudice. She has a boyfriend...but he's no Darcy. Then, one day, she finds Elizabeth Bennet (Gemma Arterton) in her bathroom. As you do.

Elizabeth, intrepid gal that she is, has discovered the portal between her home and Amanda's (the story doesn't try to explain how this could be, so don't worry too much about it). Lizzie is curious to explore the modern world, so she manages to trick Amanda into switching places. Despite Amanda's love for Pride and Prejudice, she quickly realizes that Lizzie needs to return in order to meet Mr. Darcy. In the meantime, Amanda tries to muddle through the best she can, but the story as we know it derails quite early.

I am quite the fan of Pride and Prejudice, and even I was rolling my eyes a bit at the beginning of the miniseries. I was wondering if the show was going to be able to rise above the level of mediocre fan fiction. Then, something interesting started to happen. I realized that Amanda's presence in the story wasn't going to result in a simple substitution of her for Elizabeth. Instead, despite her best efforts, she manages to upset all of the novel's storylines, most notably the courtship of Bingley and Jane Bennet. The characters start doing things they are not supposed to do, to Amanda's increasing frustration.

It was almost as though the characters suddenly had free will. Now, bear with me here, because obviously I realize that they're just being imagined by another author. But because they began to make choices that I, who knows the story backwards and forwards, could not anticipate, it was as though they became more realistic. For example: for the first time in recent memory, I was angry with Darcy when he firmly guided Bingley away from his pursuit of Jane. Why? Because it seemed like he had a choice this time, and yet he still held fast to the same pigheaded idea. (By the way, fans who think that Bingley never held Darcy accountable for his prejudiced advice should watch the miniseries just for the opportunity to see that redressed.)

In case I haven't made it clear, I imagine that Lost in Austen will really only be enjoyable to confirmed Pride and Prejudice fans, and even they might find it a bit silly. However, it does let you see some of the characters in a new light, particularly Bingley and Wickham. Plus there's this:

I'm reminded of the old trope that a picture is worth a thousand words, and perhaps I only needed to post this image of Elliot Cowan* as Mr. Darcy. Incidentally, gentle reader, this serves a reminder that, if you should ever find yourself in the company of both Mr. Darcy and a pond, it is perfectly fine to suggest that it seems like a jolly good time for him to take a swim.

Darcy has become a bit of an iconic role, hasn't it? Interestingly, there are plans to make Lost in Austen into an American feature-length film, which would entail casting yet another Darcy. Quite a career boost for some lucky young actor. (Cowan is currently playing Stanley Kowalski opposite Rachel Weisz in a West End production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Talk about iconic.)

*I have to note that, although it may not be readily apparent in the pictures I've posted, Cowan bears an often uncanny resemblance to Heath Ledger. I actually found it distracting while watching.

My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme

In Pasadena, California, where I was raised, France did not have a good reputation. My tall and taciturn father, "Big John" McWilliams, liked to say that all Europeans, especially the French, were "dark" and "dirty," although he'd never actually been to Europe and didn't know any Frenchmen. I had met some French people, but they were a couple of cranky spinster schoolteachers. Despite years of "learning" French, by rote, I could neither speak nor understand a word of the language. Furthermore, thanks to articles in Vogue and Hollywood spectaculars, I suspected that France was a nation of icky-picky people where the women were all dainty, exquisitely coiffed, nasty little creatures, the men all Adolphe Menjou-like dandies who twirled their mustaches, pinched girls, and schemed against American rubes.

I was a six-foot-two-inch, thirty-six-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian. The sight of France in my porthole was like a giant question mark.

-My Life in France

I love Julia Child. I didn't know this before reading My Life in France, but it turns out that it's absolutely true. I totally understand where Julie Powell was coming from (although now that I can compare Julie with Julia, it doesn't do Julie any favors).

I don't see how you could read this book and not love Julia. My Life in France commences with Julia moving to France with her husband, the artist and diplomat Paul Child. She falls in love with French cuisine immediately, but it takes some time for her to develop the idea of cooking herself. She enrolls in Le Cordon Bleu, and takes to it with what one quickly discovers is a characteristic zeal. This is Julia Child becoming Julia Child.

As Julia takes on cooking, she meets Simone "Simca" Beck and Louisette Bertholle, who are writing a cookbook on traditional French cuisine. Julia gets involved, and the book quickly becomes a new obsession. Cookery-bookery (as Julia refers to it) involves enormous amounts of time spent developing, testing, and writing up recipes, then conferring with her co-authors (mostly Simca, as time wore on). Although the book did not originate with her, over the years it becomes Julia's baby. She brings stacks of manuscript with her when Paul is transferred from France to Marseille, then again to Plittersdorf, Germany; Oslo; and finally back to the States. We follow her throughout this epic undertaking, sharing in her delight at a recipe perfected as well as her disappointment when her publisher does not want to produce the finished work.

When I think of Julia, words like "pluck" and "moxie" and, inevitably, joie de vivre come to mind. Although her life was privileged, it wasn't always easy - particularly in the way her husband was treated by the government (he was interrogated during the McCarthy era). She always made the most of it, though, and I loved reading about her journey.

As much as this book is about Julia's love of food, and of Paul, it is about Julia's love of France. Although I am no cook*, I wholeheartedly identify with this love of France, which I've shared almost as long as I can remember. When I was in high school, I used to take most of the money I received at my birthday and Christmas and put it in a jar marked "Money for France." I spent it in college - not in France, alas (though I did go to Italy). I still haven't been to France, but reading this book was a lovely vicarious experience. I highly recommend it.

A note on the film Julia & Julia: In my review of the book Julie & Julia (which I linked to above), I recommended the film over Julie Powell's book. My Life in France provided the inspiration for the Julia sections of that movie, and although Meryl Streep is delightful as Julia, this book is the most essential of the three works.

Up next: Land of Lincoln by Andrew Ferguson, a study of the ways in which Lincoln is still part of our lives today. I love Lincoln, so I'm excited for this one.

*I do think reading books about food is inspiring me to experiment a bit more, though. This weekend I made an apple pie - it had plenty of butter in it, so I think Julia would have approved. This is the next thing I want to try:

YouTube - Julia Child Makes an Omelet.

The Blood-Dimmed Tide by Rennie Airth

"In the end we are faced with a mystery to which there is yet no solution. Indeed, if one were seeking proof of the existence of evil - and this is not a search I have ever undertaken, nor wish to believe in - then one need look no further than these monsters who by rights should not exist outside the realm of our nightmares."

-The Blood-Dimmed Tide

First off, I think I should note that The Blood-Dimmed Tide is a sequel, and I have not read its predecessor, The River of Darkness. I suppose this colors my perception of the book, especially in the development of its characters. That being said, I had no difficulty following the plot - there are numerous references to the previous case, but they are all pretty self-explanatory.

The Blood-Dimmed Tide is set in England, 1932. Ramifications from World War I are still apparent, and there is growing concern about the political situation in Germany. John Madden, a former inspector for the Scotland Yard, is living a quiet life in the countryside with his wife and two children. That life is disrupted, however, when a young girl goes missing. Madden can't help but follow his instincts and, despite his wife's fervent opposition, becomes involved in the ensuing investigation. Although he is never officially on the case - we follow police developments through Chief Inspector Angus Sinclair, a former colleague of Madden's - he can't help but feel a responsibility to see it through, despite the increasingly troubling evidence they are on the trail of a dangerous serial killer.

I love mysteries, I truly do. I am not a big fan of gore, however, and I would not in all likelihood pick out a book on my own that featured violence against children (this is one of a number of books my aunt lent me recently). This book is not gratuitous, but it is also not for the faint of heart - I basically had to put the content of the crime out of my head and focus on the investigation, because thinking about it too much would have made me queasy. I will say that I think the plot moved along at a respectable speed, and things were neither overly simplistic nor needlessly complicated. On the other hand, it never turned into a page-turner.

Madden, whom I realize sounds like the protagonist from my plot description, is not so central as one would assume. Clearly it is meant to be his story, and he is the hero who does a lot of the best detective work, but he's more peripheral than I would have liked. Because author Rennie Airth decided to have Madden as a retired detective (a result of a perilous situation in the first book, apparently), it could never truly be his investigation. That's where characters like Angus Sinclair come in. Unfortunately, Sinclair doesn't have much of a personality. He's only marginally distinctive from the other policemen mentioned, and the major difference between them seemed to be rank - Sinclair is in charge of the investigation, Bennett and Holly are his superiors, Billy Styles is younger and lower on the totem pole - other than that, there's little to speak of. Madden himself is an enigmatic figure, prone to scowling and not saying much. Apparently he was quite angst-ridden in the first book, as a survivor of WWI as well as a grieving widower, but his second marriage* seems to have largely put him on even keel. Nice for him, I suppose, but who wants well-adjusted detectives? Detectives with demons for me, please.

Another facet of the book I found interesting was how un-period it seems to be. Aside from the references to the rise of the Nazi party - the quotation above comes from Jewish psychologist visiting the Madden family from Austria - there is very little that signals you that this book is set when it is. Indeed, in the early pages, with references to motor traffic and a doctor off golfing, it would have been very easy to suppose that the book was relatively modern. Normally I feel like period books have more small touches that make them of the era - things that one assumes required a fair amount of research. To be fair to Airth, perhaps it was a deliberate choice to limit such references, to make the era seem more relevant and to draw parallels to contemporary society. I dig little nods to history, though, so I found the modernism somewhat disappointing

Up next: My Life in France by Julia Child, which I am finding delightful so far.

*Incidentally, Madden's wife, Helen, is a doctor. Although I'm no expert on the era of the book, I have to feel this would be unusual in 1932. No one ever mentions it, though. Perhaps it was discussed sufficiently in the first book?

The Burnt Orange Heresy by Charles Willeford

I closed the book, pushed it to one side, and then reached for Volume III. My fingers trembled - a little - as I lit a cigarette. I knew why I had lingered so long over the preschool child piece, even though I hated to admit it to myself. For a long time (I said to myself that I was only waiting to finish my cigarette first), I was physically unable to open the book to my article on Jacques Debierue. Every evil thing Dorian Gray did appeared on the face of his closeted portrait, but in my case, I wonder sometimes if there is a movie projector in a closet somewhere whirring away, showing the events of those two days of my life over and over. Evil, like everything else, should keep pace with the times, and I'm not a turn-of-the-century dilettante like Dorian Gray. I'm a professional, and as contemporary as the glaring Florida sun outside my window.

-The Burnt Orange Heresy

That excerpt is from the third page of The Burnt Orange Heresy, and it's what I'd call a heck of an opening. Three pages in, and we already know that narrator James Figueras has done something very bad indeed. As to the particulars - well, Charles Willeford knows how to keep those under wraps for a good long while.

In fact, as the novel wore on, I forgot that Figueras had made that Dorian Gray comparison. He's cold and ambitious, certainly; an art critic who's hungry for prestige. He takes an opportunity to make what could be a career-making connection with a legendarily reclusive artist - of course, it comes with a catch. And that catch leads him down, down, down...

I hate to say too much about this one. Naturally, if you're not wild about noir or suspense, it's not going to be the book for you. But for anyone who might be interested, I think the less said, the better. And it's not even so much that it's a mystery - not in the usual whodunit? way. It's more of a window into the mind of a criminal - perhaps more comparable to the aforementioned Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as psychological portraits of guilt like Crime and Punishment and The Secret History. Much slighter, I must say - my copy is only 140 pages.

I did want to mention, however, that in addition to crafting a nifty bit of suspense, Willeford is also an artist himself - it shows. I'm an avid museum-goer (and former Art History student), so I appreciated that Figueras rang true in that regard. I also enjoyed that, after launching into a particularly lengthy critical reflection, Figueras eventually noticed that his listener had fallen asleep. Not everyone loves Dada, it seems.

Up next: I finished The Burnt Orange Heresy a couple of days ago, so I'm actually quite close to wrapping up The Blood-Dimmed Tide, another mystery. (Lovely title, I know. It's actually Yeats, as it turns out. Who knew?)

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

"One more word. You look as if you thought it tainted you to be loved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I if I would, cannot cleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have never loved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughts too much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love. But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part."

-North and South

I hope it does not spoil things to reveal that the preceding passage comes at the end of a botched proposal of marriage. If you're not familiar with the story of North and South*, I'm not sure how to better describe it except Pride and Prejudice (with its own famous trainwreck of a proposal) by way of Dickens. Now, Gaskell's prose is not as lively as Austen's, nor as rich as that of Dickens. (I don't want to oversell it.) But the comparison is inevitable: North and South could just as easily be entitled Pride and Prejudice: Industrial Edition.

Margaret Hale is representing the South. She's from the countryside, and unexpectedly finds herself relocating to the factory town of Milton after her father, a curate, suffers a crisis of faith. Milton is smoky, loud, and populated with a very different sort of people than Margaret is used to (and not just because of their delightful accents). Then she meets Mr. Thornton.

Mr. Thornton (representing the North, in case that was unclear) is the wealthy and well-respected proprietor of a local cotton factory. He and Margaret clash early and often. Margaret, still narrow-minded in her views of trade, does not consider him to be a gentleman. And Mr. Thornton thinks her far too (wait for it) proud. But, interestingly, the bulk of their argument revolves around labor issues. Okay, maybe that doesn't sound interesting. But the fact that their issues revolve around a matter of substance is what puts North and South apart from so many of the common "opposites attract" stories.

The other threads of the novel aren't quite as engaging. Margaret begins to form a tentative friendship with a sickly former-factory girl, whose constant refrain about her imminent journey to Holy Jerusalem is wearying, although not necessarily inaccurate. Margaret also deals with her surprisingly needy parents and with the case of her wayward brother, who has been accused of mutiny. The latter storyline is broached with perhaps one of the most ham-fisted instances of exposition I've ever read, to wit:

"Poor Frederick," thought she, sighing. "Oh! if Frederick had but been a clergyman, instead of going into the navy, and being lost to us all! I wish I knew all about it. I never understood it from Aunt Shaw; I only knew he could not come back to England because of that terrible affair."

So yes, it's a bit dated in terms of phrasing and language. For some reason I only very rarely get that impression from Dickens, although he and Gaskell were contemporaries. (According to my edition of the book, Dickens thought North and South was "[an] admirable story...full of character and power.") Of course, Dickens is rather short on grand romance.

In my previous post, I alluded to the fact that Mr. Thornton is possibly more swoonworthy than the much more famous Mr. Darcy. Naturally, it's a matter of taste. I think Mr. Thornton's biggest asset is that he's a self-made man. He's very capable, and he's eager to better himself (he takes classics lessons with Mr. Hale). Not that Darcy isn't accomplished...but what does he do all day? In addition, we as readers actually spend more time with Mr. Thornton, and get a better sense of his feelings. Some people are a bit leery of angst (and after Twilight, I well understood that feeling), but really, how can you argue with passages like this:

[Mr. Thorton] turned round to his mother; his face was very gray and grim. "Yes, mother. I do believe he is her lover." When he had spoken, he turned round again; he writhed himself about, like one in bodily pain. He leant his face against his hand.

Ah, jealousy (he's mistaken, of course). I don't remember Darcy writhing around, feeling the pain of his love. That's pretty intense.

Mr. Thornton is somewhat different in the miniseries, which stars Daniela Denby-Ashe and Richard Armitage. I'm not planning on doing a separate post on it, as I haven't seen it recently enough - I actually watched it before I read the book the first time. I did rewatch the first episode, though, and was struck with how, uh, violent** Mr. Thornton is in the miniseries. It's a bit of a leap from the book's Thornton, who prides himself in keeping his emotions in check (writhing aside). Other than that, I would say that in most regards the miniseries is more enjoyable than the book. The ending is changed substantially for the better, and some of the gloom of the book (people die off fairly regularly) is toned down.

Up next: I'm going to try The Burnt Orange Heresy by Charles Willeford, which is favorite of my dad's.

*Like many classics, North and South has an utterly dull cover in pretty much every edition. Thus I substituted another miniseries picture, which I find more aesthetically pleasing.

**Perhaps I shouldn't find the violent turn of the miniseries surprising. After all, very shortly thereafter Mr. Thorton grew out his hair, traveled back in time, and happily spent his days as the evil henchman of the Sheriff of Nottingham.

I Want To Read: When Will There Be Good News?

This is Kate Atkinson. She is awesome.

Well, I don't know her per se, so perhaps I should qualify that her writing is awesome. Her most recent book, When Will There Be Good News?, was released last year. The only reason that it's not already in my hot little hands is because I am trying to preserve some modicum of fiscal responsibility. (It's not in American paperback until January 2010).

When Will There Be Good News? is Atkinson's latest mystery featuring the Scottish detective Jackson Brodie. I picked up the first, Case Histories, based on strong reviews and the intriguing title. (Atkinson has a way with titles: I like Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Emotionally Weird).

It was a good pick. Great, really. The thing with Atkinson is that she infuses well-crafted mysteries with language that is associated with literature, as opposed to (heaven forbid) genre fiction. It's not uncommon to find a mystery writer who can navigate a tricky plot but who doesn't rise above mediocrity on a sentence by sentence basis. And of course there are many, often more well-respected writers who can write beautiful stories in which very little seems to actually happen. Atkinson fuses the best of the two. Her stories are ambitious, complicated, sometimes messy, but absolutely enjoyable.

It's the reason I haven't just checked the book out from the library. I'm convinced that once I've read it, I'll want to hold on to it. It's nice to have that level of trust in an author. It doesn't always work out of course (see: The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell). Also, of course, I don't feel that I can go to the library when I have a pile of unread books sitting in my apartment. Oh, the troubles of a reader.