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.

Bridget Jones - Mad About The Boy by Helen Fielding

I was on my OE in London when I first really heard about Bridget Jones's Diary... probably because the film was coming out that starred Renee Zellweger as Bridget Jones, Colin Firth as Mark Darcy and Hugh Grant as Daniel Cleaver.  Also the flat I was dossing in just happened to have a copy of Bridget Jones's Diary conveniently on the shelf in the lounge room.  It was a cringe fest and too funny not to laugh out loud.

I enjoyed that book so much I bought the second book Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and laughed and cringed my way through that book too.

So I was quite excited to find that Helen Fielding had written a third book... then devastated to find through the publicity machine that she'd killed Mark Darcy off!!!  I couldn't possibly think of how that could have occurred.  Luckily this third book does eventually explain it.

Anyhow, here is the front cover and blurb for Bridget Jones - Mad About the Boy:

 

So Bridget is now a mother... and if you remember how chaotic she was as a Singleton (remember the blue leek soup?), well she isn't much better as a mother.  She is desolate still at the loss of Mark, despite it being five or so years down the track since he died.  She is trying to get a career again, get back in the dating game, come to grips with technology like Twitter and texting, and of course there is that perpetual old chestnut, her weight issues. 

Just to add some more colour to the story are the men she dates, her crazy friends with their own dating/love life issues, a mother who is still on a completely different planet, and a barely holding it together Daniel Cleaver. 

And then there are her two kids, Billy and Mabel, also still coming to terms with the death of their father, coping with their mother's grief and just being your typical kids.

The text swings between your traditional diary entries, lists, graphs, tweets on Twitter, emails and texts.  Chapters are generally short.  There are still the laugh out loud moments and the pure cringe that only a character like Bridget can bring.  There are situations in the book that are so obvious the worst will happen that as you read it is like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion.

At 386 pages long it is a solid read.  I kept it by the bed and read it bit by bit during the term... but I did go some long periods between reads so had to re-read some parts to get the gist again.  There were other days that I feasted on the book.

If you loved how riridiculously funny first two books, you won't be disappointed by this book (apart from sharing Bridget's sorrow at the loss of Mark Darcy).  It is a good solid completion of Bridget's story.  I'd be hard pressed to see how Helen Fielding could write another book about Bridget before she hits the retirement village now!!