COMMENTS:
for those of you who are still trying to find this whodunit blog at the rep.com's community blogger page, dwight kier, on-line news editor, and melissa griffy, also of the rep.com, assure me that the problem will be solved by their tech team (or by my changing to firefox). hold on!
BOOKS:
it is a truth universally acknowledged that everyone loves jane austen and that the opening line of her pride and prejudice is one of the most quoted literary lines to be found, 'it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.'
it is also accepted that those readers who are seriously interested in murder mysteries are fans of p.d. james; that is, baroness james of holland park. that means when we fans see a novel that will combine ideas from those two authors, there is more than a frisson of excitement.
frisson-ing with excitement is how i approached death comes to pemberly. many of you will remember that pemberly is the magnificent estate owned by darcy. he and elizabeth bennett take up residence there after their marriage. the story takes place in 1803, enough time after the marriage to give darcy and elizabeth two boys with another child on the way.
p.d. james gives us a good summary of the story of pride and prejudice to start her novel. she tells the story from an even more economy-based point of view than did austen, who was quite aware of social and wealth levels.
many of the characters (all of elizabeth's family) and small details (white soup) reappear, chief among them, george wickham, husband of elizabeth's sister lydia. he is no longer in the army, but is still causing trouble. i don't remember mr. bennett being as intelligent as james's version. to balance this, elizabeth is less intelligent. james also recreates much of the feeling of austen's language.
the problem is that there is really no crime. we have a death. we have a suspect (wickham, of course). how all of this is connected is a slight mystery, which includes too many pages of explanation at the end of the novel, but if you are expecting this to be a murder mystery, as i did, you will be disappointed. if you are looking for a continuation of darcy and elizabeth's life together, fine.
the novel is 291 pages and is published by alfred a. knopf.
WRITING HINT:
give yourself time. when you write something (business letter, poem, press release, story), and you think it is finished, put it aside. come back to it later. ideally, you'll wait a day before taking it up again. in the real world of writing in an office or writing for immediate publication, we don't always have that luxury. but you can take a coffee break, come back and pick the document up again. amazing what you will see that you had not seen a few minutes earlier.
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