Longbourn

Longbourn

by Jo Baker

★★★★

What an utter and unexpected delight this was. I’m so wary of any books that latch on to Jane Austen’s success, trying to spin their own best seller out of her characters, but this one is a great novel on its own merit. Yes, the story is set in the Bennet household, made famous in the pages of Pride and Prejudice. We do see the ever-recognizable characters we’ve grown to love, but Baker achieves something unique with this book. She’s created new characters that we care about while at the same time giving an added depth to the ones we already knew.

A housemaid, Sarah, has spent most of her life employed at the Bennet home. When a new footman named James appears, their small staff is thrown off balance. Soon everyone’s pasts and futures come into question as the story unfolds.  

I love Austen’s novels and I know many people had problems with this book because they didn’t love the light it cast on their beloved characters. For me that wasn’t an issue. I didn’t think that the book changed them in significant ways. Wickham is still a cad; Mr. Collins is insufferable, etc. I think the key is to remember that this is not Pride and Prejudice; it should be treated as a completely different book.

I did feel like the story came undone a bit at the end of the novel. When James leaves Longbourn I lost interest a little and felt like the book never quite found its footing again. The tone of the novel changed dramatically and didn’t seem to synch with the rest of the story. It lost the close knit feel that the world of Longbourn radiates.

I did love reading about the practical side of that time period. Baker did a great job describing the inane duties that any maid would have in a house full of so many women. I also like the way Mary’s quiet role is expanded. Her role in Pride and Prejudice is a small one, but she’d given more depth in this story.

BOTTOM LINE: A great piece of historical fiction. As long as you go into the book remembering that this is NOT an Austen novel, I think you’ll enjoy it. Treat it as a completely separate story instead of as retelling of Pride and Prejudice.

One Little Word

I found the One Little Word project over at Entomology of a Bookworm (who found it here at Sophisticated Dorkiness). This is a project that focuses on picking one word to define your year. You can pick anything that might speak to you. Something that is a goal or inspires you. 

The more I thought about it the more I love the idea. This is the first year in as long as I can remember that I haven't made a list of New Year's resolutions for myself. This goes hand-in-hand with a lot of the changes in my life over the last year. I started a new job last January, which I love but it is also a lot more challenging and time-consuming.

This year I struggled a lot with balancing things in my life. Family, friends, work, this blog, my weekly theater reviews, and so much more. I've just felt very overwhelmed with a lot of different things and I'm not used to feeling that way. I tend to like having a lot of things going at once, so this is a bit new to me.

2014 was an incredible adventure. I celebrated my five year wedding anniversary, 30th birthday, took a dream vacation, started a new job… but all of that was a lot. It was all piled on top of everything that happens in a normal year and it was enough to make me lose my breath. 

In 2015 I want to refocus my energy, not just on the things I have to do but on the things I love to do. I also want to make sure that I'm doing things that I truly want to be doing and not just things that I've been doing for a long time out of obligation, if that makes sense. So my word, the word that just kept coming back to me over and over again is... simplify. 

What I truly want is to simplify my life. I want to find my balance again and let go of the things that are distracting me from what's really important. I don't know all that might need to change to get myself there, but that's ok. Right now I just want to focus on simplifying things and see where that takes me. 

If you were to pick one word for your year, what would it be?

Image from here.

Station Eleven

Station Eleven

by Emily St. John Mandel

★★★★★

 

I heard a lot of mentions of this book before I read it, (though I was able to completely avoid spoilers), but no one told me that it was “A Visit from the Goon Squad” plus the end of the world. Oh my gosh, this book! I literally started the audiobook on a Saturday morning and then couldn't stop cleaning the house because I wanted to have a reason to keep listening to it. 

 

Let me repeat that… this book made me clean so I could keep listening, that has never happened before. There've been times when stayed in my car for an extra minute to keep listening, but I have NEVER spent an entire day cleaning my house because I wanted to keep listening to the book. That's how good this was!

 

Technically this book is about a post-apocalyptic world. But please do not let that deter you from reading this if that's not your thing. This book really is one of the most well written connected character sketches that I've ever found. It reminded me so much of Egan's book in so many ways. It jumps back-and-forth in time and different chapters are from different characters’ point-of-view. The stories are all connected, woven together to create a big picture view of their world.

 

The book "The Passage", which was such a big hit a couple years ago, is similar in some ways, but it frustrated to me for a couple reasons. My biggest problem with it was that you became invested in a couple characters that pretty much disappeared after a certain point in the story. For a second in this book I thought the author was going to do the same thing. I didn't realize at first that the storytelling was going to be nonlinear. We jumped around in time, getting to know what our characters are like both before and after the "end of the world".

 

I was swept away in the stories at every point in the novel, which is difficult for an author to do when you’re juggling so many characters. Normally you get bored with one story and want to return to a different one. But in Station Eleven, each characters’ tale adds so much depth to the others that you don’t care who you are reading about in a given moment.

 

BOTTOM LINE: Just fantastic, my favorite read of the year so far! If the genre or plot doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I’d encourage you to check it out anyway. It's one of those books that rises above the basic plot points it contains and becomes something that almost anyone can connect with. It's more about human nature, grief, loneliness, and how we are able to connect with others. It's beautiful and I know I'll be reading it again.