MADreads

Austen update

April 14th, 2008 Sarah - Alicia Ashman

For a couple of weeks in March, PBS suspended their weekly screenings of Jane Austen movies (which are now over, sadly) in order to have a pledge drive, and while I support their right to garner support, I missed my Jane Austen fix.

So I tried yet another Austen-esque novel, this time by an author named Amanda Grange: Mr. Knightley’s Diary.  For those of you in the Austen know, of course, Mr. Knightley is one of the main characters in Jane Austen’s novel Emma (for those of you further in the know, you’ll remember the 1996 film Emma; it starred Gwyneth Paltrow and the dreamy Jeremy Northam as Mr. Knightley).  This is Austen from the guy’s point of view, and because it is in diary form, you get a daily dose of Mr. Knightley’s thoughts.

Which, I think, is one of the reasons why this was not one of my favorite Austen Imitations (or Austen Lites, as I think of them).  The diary form is just too limiting, and it’s very hard to do it well.  I now have a whole new appreciation for Helen Fielding, whose own homage to Jane, Bridget Jones’s Diary, was also written in diary form, but succeeded.

But?  If you desperately need something Jane-esque, here’s another one to try.  And who knows?  Grange is also the author of Mr. Darcy’s Diary (from Pride and Prejudice); maybe I’ll try that one.*

*My obsession clearly knows no bounds.

Entry Filed under: Recreational Fiction, Romance