Saturday, March 1, 2008

Austenland by Shannon Hale



This is what I did from 10:30 - 2 today. :-)

Austenland is a delightful little book "For the woman with everything except a Mr. Darcy of her own." The heroine, Jane Hayes, is single and has a secret obsession with Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy; she actually hides the DVD in a house plant so that others won't suspect. A wealthy relative, knowing this, gives her a 3 week vacation to an English resort called Austenland where you immerse yourself in Regency era etiquette, dress and verbiage; including corsets, empire-waste dresses, bonnets, etc.

I enjoyed the book but there was one thing that bugged me. I didn't like the Miss Charming character or the way the author treated her, but thankfully she's a side character and doesn't have much page time. I won't tell you anything about her and let you make your own judgements.

Overall a good read and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys Austen fan fiction. You'll enjoy trying to figure out which characters from Austen's books each of the guests and workers could represent. The author never comes out and tells you but if you're familiar with Austen's books it's pretty easy deduce.

2 comments:

Heather said...

Sounds wonderful - I'll have to give it a read. Check out my Shelfari - I so need to add some books to that one.

Jen said...

OH! just had to share, loved this one!!