Longbourn by Jo Baker

I wandered into the bookshop before heading to a favourite café for a leisurely lunch.  I wasn't really sure what I was looking for, but I wanted an engaging read, and I had left all my current reading material at home before I headed for a quick break to the beach, during which I'd decided not to take the kitchen sink with me.

My eyes glanced over the shelves and settled on Longbourn by Jo Baker.

I am a big fan of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, loving the book, the BBC miniseries (which I have watched over and over), the movie version with Keira Knightley and the Bollywood rendition call Bride and Prejudice (also watched multiple times).  I think I've read every Jane Austen book and avidly watched the movie biopic of her life, Becoming Jane.  Then there are the other spin offs like Clueless and the Bridget Jones' Diary series....

This book focuses on the people below stairs in the Austen class Pride and Prejudice, the characters that are seen and unheard in the book, the miniseries or the movie, who have few lines if any (excepting Hill, who probably has the most to say in any adaptation as the senior servant of the Bennet household).  The description of the running of the house and the lower working class is raw, and at times crass, as it depicts those who do the manual labour of a gentleman's household.

It brings up a few surprises and fills in the back histories about Mr and Mrs Bennet as well as the downstairs characters, and shows Wickham was a lot more debauched than even Pride and Prejudice alluded to.  We see Elizabeth as not so sure about herself as a young married woman, and how Jane and Elizabeth were conscious of giving their servants clothes that they no longer wore or books to read.

I polished this book off in less than 24 hours.  It was engaging.  It was funny, tender... horrific where it needed to be.  It is an honest glimpse into the running of a gentleman's house in the early 19th century and gives more information to the reader about the Napoléon war England was engaged in at the time than any of Austen's books ever does.

I do recommend this book as well worth reading if you are an Austen fan.  It will not taint your previous reading, but it complements and enhances what you enjoyed about Pride and Prejudice as a reader.