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Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden: A Novel with Pictures
Eccentric Fran wants a second chance. Thanks to her intimacy with Jane Austen, and the poet Shelley, she finds one.
Jane Austen is such a presence in Fran's life that she seems to share her cottage and garden, becoming an imaginary friend.
Fran's conversations with Jane Austen guide and chide her - but Fran is ready for change after years of teaching, reading and gardening. An encounter with a long-standing English friend, and an American writer, leads to new possibilities. Adrift, the three women bond through a love of books and a quest for the idealist poet Shelley at two pivotal moments of his life: in Wales and Venice. His otherworldly longing and yearning for utopian communities lead the women to interrogate their own past as well as motherhood, feminism, the resurgence of childhood memory in old age, the tensions and attractions between generations. Despite the appeal of solitude, the women open themselves social to ways of living - outside partnership and family. Jane Austen, as always, has plenty of comments to offer.
The novel is a (light) meditation on age, mortality, friendship, hope, and the excitement of change.
Jane Austen is such a presence in Fran's life that she seems to share her cottage and garden, becoming an imaginary friend.
Fran's conversations with Jane Austen guide and chide her - but Fran is ready for change after years of teaching, reading and gardening. An encounter with a long-standing English friend, and an American writer, leads to new possibilities. Adrift, the three women bond through a love of books and a quest for the idealist poet Shelley at two pivotal moments of his life: in Wales and Venice. His otherworldly longing and yearning for utopian communities lead the women to interrogate their own past as well as motherhood, feminism, the resurgence of childhood memory in old age, the tensions and attractions between generations. Despite the appeal of solitude, the women open themselves social to ways of living - outside partnership and family. Jane Austen, as always, has plenty of comments to offer.
The novel is a (light) meditation on age, mortality, friendship, hope, and the excitement of change.
304 pages, Paperback
Published September 7, 2021
20 people are currently reading
242 people want to read
About the author
Janet Todd
124 books73 followersJanet Todd (Jan) is a novelist, biographer, literary critic and internationally renowned scholar, known for her work on
women’s writing and feminism. Her most recent books include
the novel: Don't You Know There's A War On?;
edition and essay: Jane Austen’s Sanditon;
memoir: Radiation Diaries: Cancer, Memory
and Fragments of a Life in Words;
biography: Aphra Behn: A Secret Life;
the novel: A Man of Genius 2016.
Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden: An Illustrated Novel, forthcoming 2021
A co-founder of the journal Women’s Writing, she has published biographies and critical work on many authors,including Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughters, Mary (Shelley) and Fanny (Death And The Maidens) , and the Irish-Republican sympathiser, traveller and medical student, Lady Mount Cashell (Daughters of Ireland).
Born in Wales, Janet Todd grew up in Britain, Bermuda and Ceylon/Sri Lanka and has worked at schools and universities in Ghana, Puerto Rico, India, the US (Douglass College,
Rutgers, Florida), Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen) and England (Cambridge, UEA). A former President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, she is now an Honorary Fellow of
Newnham College.
women’s writing and feminism. Her most recent books include
the novel: Don't You Know There's A War On?;
edition and essay: Jane Austen’s Sanditon;
memoir: Radiation Diaries: Cancer, Memory
and Fragments of a Life in Words;
biography: Aphra Behn: A Secret Life;
the novel: A Man of Genius 2016.
Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden: An Illustrated Novel, forthcoming 2021
A co-founder of the journal Women’s Writing, she has published biographies and critical work on many authors,including Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughters, Mary (Shelley) and Fanny (Death And The Maidens) , and the Irish-Republican sympathiser, traveller and medical student, Lady Mount Cashell (Daughters of Ireland).
Born in Wales, Janet Todd grew up in Britain, Bermuda and Ceylon/Sri Lanka and has worked at schools and universities in Ghana, Puerto Rico, India, the US (Douglass College,
Rutgers, Florida), Scotland (Glasgow, Aberdeen) and England (Cambridge, UEA). A former President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, she is now an Honorary Fellow of
Newnham College.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 3, 2021
Many reviews of this book start with some variant of “I don’t know what I expected but it wasn’t this,” so I won’t bore you with a repetition of that theme, though I am with the herd on that. Here’s what it is: a semi-stream-of-consciousness story about aging academics, their preoccupations and conversations. It is decorated with amateur photographs taken by the author. The storytelling method makes no apologies for itself, and to judge from other reviews it lost a certain number of readers who found the intermingling of spoken and interior dialogue, of idle thought and pertinent idea, too bewildering or inconsequential. I might have been of their number had I not committed to writing a review.
The first academic we meet, Fran, has retired to a dilapidated cottage in Norfolk, where she stumps about exchanging muttered commentary with an imagined Jane Austen. My first reaction was, Who doesn’t live that way? though my Jane Austen is not her Jane Austen and I am more at peace with my psychological disorder than Fran is. Fran’s best friend, Annie, is still teaching but close to the end of her career; they visit each other in Norfolk and Cambridge and have a series of those seemingly rambling and random conversations, with Jane Austen inserting her thoughts and Fran answering either silently or sotto voce (paying attention to punctuation helps one follow here, though the book is somewhat ill-proofread).
Fran and Annie connect with a creative writing teacher, Rachel, and Thomas, a younger scholar obsessed with Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as a bright butterfly of a postgrad named Tamsin, who is portrayed as what my fellow Californians would call a Val though that isn’t really fair to her. Anyway, Tamsin chews gum and clicks away on her phone and works at her social media persona, but she’s actually a scholar like all the rest, just of a newfangled ilk.
This ill-assorted fivesome meets in various cafés and weinstuben and makes disjointed idle conversation that can be rather hard for the reader to follow. It is sporadically entertaining but also intentionally mystifying—the author makes the mistake of not wanting us to know enough about the characters early on for us to care much about them, making stretches of the book less jeu d’esprit and more dreary slog. They are really like academics everywhere—competitive, insecure, hierarchical, self-obsessed—not a favorite character type for me, I’m afraid. They all think too much and try too hard to both follow and outdo one another, and since we’re never in one character’s point of view for long, some of it leaves the reader panting after them.
Eventually Fran, Rachel, and Thomas head off to Wales to visit places where Shelley lived, all now under water after a dam was built. Here, like distant flashes of lightning, we start to get a few moments of enlightenment about why these people are pursuing Shelley (not except in Thomas’s case for professional reasons) and how the bits of Shelley biography they discuss relate to their own lives. But most of it is just more wine-drinking and lounging about, which they could as easily have done in Cambridge. It all feels rather slight and surface (okay, it may have been worth it to me for the description of John Updike as a penis with a thesaurus).
Next all five of the group go to Venice for more of the same, and here we start to get those lightning strikes for other characters, especially Rachel. But the author stays firmly in realist vein so I missed the satisfying symmetry that comes from a true parallel narrative of Shelley’s brutal Romanticism set against the past traumas of the characters’ lives. To me this is realism misinterpreted, the notion that if you talk about buttocks and smoking you’re being true to life instead of merely distracting from the ideas of the story. (But I know I hold the minority view in that regard.) Jane Austen continues to remark, the living characters continue to compete and negotiate, and somehow they start to develop a degree of affection for one another. It all ends up with .
For my part I enjoyed some of the social satire of academic lives (some of it was too England-specific for me to get), and did develop a degree of sympathy for the characters, some more than others; but bringing their humanity into the story earlier would have improved my pleasure in following them around.
{Note: I was sent an ARC by a publicist in exchange for an honest review.}
The first academic we meet, Fran, has retired to a dilapidated cottage in Norfolk, where she stumps about exchanging muttered commentary with an imagined Jane Austen. My first reaction was, Who doesn’t live that way? though my Jane Austen is not her Jane Austen and I am more at peace with my psychological disorder than Fran is. Fran’s best friend, Annie, is still teaching but close to the end of her career; they visit each other in Norfolk and Cambridge and have a series of those seemingly rambling and random conversations, with Jane Austen inserting her thoughts and Fran answering either silently or sotto voce (paying attention to punctuation helps one follow here, though the book is somewhat ill-proofread).
Fran and Annie connect with a creative writing teacher, Rachel, and Thomas, a younger scholar obsessed with Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as a bright butterfly of a postgrad named Tamsin, who is portrayed as what my fellow Californians would call a Val though that isn’t really fair to her. Anyway, Tamsin chews gum and clicks away on her phone and works at her social media persona, but she’s actually a scholar like all the rest, just of a newfangled ilk.
This ill-assorted fivesome meets in various cafés and weinstuben and makes disjointed idle conversation that can be rather hard for the reader to follow. It is sporadically entertaining but also intentionally mystifying—the author makes the mistake of not wanting us to know enough about the characters early on for us to care much about them, making stretches of the book less jeu d’esprit and more dreary slog. They are really like academics everywhere—competitive, insecure, hierarchical, self-obsessed—not a favorite character type for me, I’m afraid. They all think too much and try too hard to both follow and outdo one another, and since we’re never in one character’s point of view for long, some of it leaves the reader panting after them.
Eventually Fran, Rachel, and Thomas head off to Wales to visit places where Shelley lived, all now under water after a dam was built. Here, like distant flashes of lightning, we start to get a few moments of enlightenment about why these people are pursuing Shelley (not except in Thomas’s case for professional reasons) and how the bits of Shelley biography they discuss relate to their own lives. But most of it is just more wine-drinking and lounging about, which they could as easily have done in Cambridge. It all feels rather slight and surface (okay, it may have been worth it to me for the description of John Updike as a penis with a thesaurus).
Next all five of the group go to Venice for more of the same, and here we start to get those lightning strikes for other characters, especially Rachel. But the author stays firmly in realist vein so I missed the satisfying symmetry that comes from a true parallel narrative of Shelley’s brutal Romanticism set against the past traumas of the characters’ lives. To me this is realism misinterpreted, the notion that if you talk about buttocks and smoking you’re being true to life instead of merely distracting from the ideas of the story. (But I know I hold the minority view in that regard.) Jane Austen continues to remark, the living characters continue to compete and negotiate, and somehow they start to develop a degree of affection for one another. It all ends up with .
For my part I enjoyed some of the social satire of academic lives (some of it was too England-specific for me to get), and did develop a degree of sympathy for the characters, some more than others; but bringing their humanity into the story earlier would have improved my pleasure in following them around.
{Note: I was sent an ARC by a publicist in exchange for an honest review.}
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October 10, 2021I was honored to have been asked to read an ARC by the author's public relations manager. The idea behind the storyline seemed intriguing and I could relate to the "coming of old age" theme. Of course, having the so-called ghost of Jane Austen in the protagonist's mind was compelling! The idea of women uniting in their love of books and long-enduring friendships was attractive as well. I was hoping to feel cozy and at home with the characters; however to date, I can't seem to get past the first few chapters (although I did sneak a peek at the end). It could be that the writing style is over my head...I don't know. I am not too familiar with Shelley, certainly not enough to delve into "literary criticism." There are discussions that set my teeth on edge; but again, that's just me and my own personal opinions and life philosophies. I may pick the book up again, when my mind isn't so cluttered. I wouldn't mind hearing Jane's opinion on the matter...she always knew the right thing to say.
November 8, 2021
Janet Todd's latest book drew me to it because of its cohering feature, the poet Percy Shelley. An adventuresome band of scholars, writers, and teachers (three women, one man, and a few others) meet in public houses for lively chat and banter over drinks. Their common interest in Shelley the man decides them to visit two places that involved the poet, Wales and Venice. A shade companion of one in the group is Jane Austen; she interestingly shares her personal rural Regency point of view on the group's conversation and overviews of Shelley. For most of the time, the novel's ambitious unlimited omniscient point of view dwells in the consciousness of each of the three female members of the group. As the past and certain locales influenced Shelley and helped shape his future, so is the case for the women.
In dramatizing the band's interest in Shelley, Todd reveals something of the motivation for why the general public and scholars continue to be drawn not only to the poet's great works but also to his rebellious life, irresponsible loves, and neglectful doings. Suggested is that some things in the character of the poet to some mysterious degree reside in those who seek to understand him—some good, some not—and by coming to terms with them in Shelley, they might come to terms with themselves. One show of kinship is Shelley's dream of forming a commune of dreamers, thinkers, and artists; the women consider such a state for themselves together in retirement.
A salient aspect of the poet for the investigators is the abandonment of his pregnant young wife, Harriet Westbrook, mother of their two children and perhaps a third not yet born when she committed suicide. Another suicide was his sister-in-law who was denied a place in the Shelley circle. A third death was of his young daughter Clara due to Shelley's improvident demands. Four of his five children with his second wife Mary may have died for the same reason. The adventuring band discovers nothing new to add to what is known of Shelley's culpability. Their consideration of these traits only deepens the human mystery of a poet who championed freedom from tyranny but whose own tyrannizing was deadly and damaging to those closest to him, his wives, sister-in-law, and children. The worthy pursuit of the group produces nothing new except enhanced empathy for the dead before their deaths and for the grieving souls who survived them.
I purchased the print copy but decided to read it in its ebook form. The many interesting illustrations are easily enlarged to clarity and most are effective in grayscale. They are not in color on the ebook reader I use, so that was lost there, but the illustrations in the book are in full color, most of them to good effect in both forms at enhancing the mood of the text into which they are inserted.
The book's ebook description seems apt to me in all particulars. Not an Austen enthusiast, I could not immediately tune in to most of the references and names from her works, and some vocabulary was new to me. The ebook feature of being able to look up names and definitions on the spot was extremely helpful and accomplished with little effort. In this regard and as concerns the whole ambitious work, a sentence from one Goodreads commentator struck a chord of agreement: "Janet Todd does not write easy books, but they are grand." I have read some of Todd's nonfiction works; they read easily for me. I have read all of her efforts in fiction and found them to be "page-turners," especially Don't You Know There's a War On? While Todd's Jane Austen and Shelley… was not a page-turner for me, its ambitious conception, steady execution, interesting focus on Shelley, and reactions to him made this book like her others—grand and rewarding.
One imaginative representation that stands out appears in the book's last sentence. "Shelley smiles his sunny smile and looks up to the bright stars, beaming in daylight." It takes a visionary to see stars in daylight and creative vision to dramatize Shelley's apparent power in so clear a way.
In dramatizing the band's interest in Shelley, Todd reveals something of the motivation for why the general public and scholars continue to be drawn not only to the poet's great works but also to his rebellious life, irresponsible loves, and neglectful doings. Suggested is that some things in the character of the poet to some mysterious degree reside in those who seek to understand him—some good, some not—and by coming to terms with them in Shelley, they might come to terms with themselves. One show of kinship is Shelley's dream of forming a commune of dreamers, thinkers, and artists; the women consider such a state for themselves together in retirement.
A salient aspect of the poet for the investigators is the abandonment of his pregnant young wife, Harriet Westbrook, mother of their two children and perhaps a third not yet born when she committed suicide. Another suicide was his sister-in-law who was denied a place in the Shelley circle. A third death was of his young daughter Clara due to Shelley's improvident demands. Four of his five children with his second wife Mary may have died for the same reason. The adventuring band discovers nothing new to add to what is known of Shelley's culpability. Their consideration of these traits only deepens the human mystery of a poet who championed freedom from tyranny but whose own tyrannizing was deadly and damaging to those closest to him, his wives, sister-in-law, and children. The worthy pursuit of the group produces nothing new except enhanced empathy for the dead before their deaths and for the grieving souls who survived them.
I purchased the print copy but decided to read it in its ebook form. The many interesting illustrations are easily enlarged to clarity and most are effective in grayscale. They are not in color on the ebook reader I use, so that was lost there, but the illustrations in the book are in full color, most of them to good effect in both forms at enhancing the mood of the text into which they are inserted.
The book's ebook description seems apt to me in all particulars. Not an Austen enthusiast, I could not immediately tune in to most of the references and names from her works, and some vocabulary was new to me. The ebook feature of being able to look up names and definitions on the spot was extremely helpful and accomplished with little effort. In this regard and as concerns the whole ambitious work, a sentence from one Goodreads commentator struck a chord of agreement: "Janet Todd does not write easy books, but they are grand." I have read some of Todd's nonfiction works; they read easily for me. I have read all of her efforts in fiction and found them to be "page-turners," especially Don't You Know There's a War On? While Todd's Jane Austen and Shelley… was not a page-turner for me, its ambitious conception, steady execution, interesting focus on Shelley, and reactions to him made this book like her others—grand and rewarding.
One imaginative representation that stands out appears in the book's last sentence. "Shelley smiles his sunny smile and looks up to the bright stars, beaming in daylight." It takes a visionary to see stars in daylight and creative vision to dramatize Shelley's apparent power in so clear a way.
September 3, 2021
Jane Austen and Shelley In the Garden is a difficult book to describe in a sentence. It’s a story of friendships new and old. Fran and Annie have been friends for most of their lives. They love each other even though they also irritate each other. When Fran visits Annie she meets some of her new friends, Shelley enthusiasts. Somehow Annie’s friends, Thomas and Rachel, decide to go to Wales to see the places Percy Blythe Shelley lived when he was young and newly married. Fran, who was born there is eager to go with them. Thomas is a Shelley expert and Rachel is a writer/teacher who also likes Shelley and Thomas, though she is closer in age to Fran and Annie. Fran is a bit of an interrupter, though they don’t know that much of the time her nonsequiturs are overheard conversations with her personal haunt, Jane Austen.
Despite the occasional irritations, the group, this time including Annie and a grad student named Yasmin travel to Venice to see where Shelley lived and died. They tell the stories, the great tragedies of his marriage and children’s deaths. Shelley was not a nice man. They share more of their sorrows and grief.
Jane Austen and Shelley In the Garden is not for everyone. The action is limited despite their traveling adventures. This is a story about conversation and companionship. The conversations are delightful. The writing is beautiful. The plot is of minor interest compared to the conversation. But what conversation, about great literature, poetry, academics, and life. There really doesn’t need to be more with this talented writer.
Janet Todd does not write easy books, but they are grand.
Jane Austen and Shelley In the Garden will be released on September 7th. I received an ARC from the publisher, Fentum Press.
Jane Austen and Shelley In the Garden at GoodReads
Janet Todd author site
Don’t You Know There’s a War On? review
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
Despite the occasional irritations, the group, this time including Annie and a grad student named Yasmin travel to Venice to see where Shelley lived and died. They tell the stories, the great tragedies of his marriage and children’s deaths. Shelley was not a nice man. They share more of their sorrows and grief.
Jane Austen and Shelley In the Garden is not for everyone. The action is limited despite their traveling adventures. This is a story about conversation and companionship. The conversations are delightful. The writing is beautiful. The plot is of minor interest compared to the conversation. But what conversation, about great literature, poetry, academics, and life. There really doesn’t need to be more with this talented writer.
Janet Todd does not write easy books, but they are grand.
Jane Austen and Shelley In the Garden will be released on September 7th. I received an ARC from the publisher, Fentum Press.
Jane Austen and Shelley In the Garden at GoodReads
Janet Todd author site
Don’t You Know There’s a War On? review
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpre...
October 14, 2021
Finishing this book was more a duty than a delight. I bought it based on a positive review and the invocation of Shelley and Austen in the title (clever marketing). But the author befuddled me—who are these characters? What is their relationship to each other? At the end, I still got them confused.
Ironic, because one of the characters teaches creative writing(which one? Still not sure). And Fiction 101 teaches: differentiate your characters! Individualize them!
And why does the spirit of Jane Austen whisper to one character? Is she hallucinating? Very disappointed in this novel.
Ironic, because one of the characters teaches creative writing(which one? Still not sure). And Fiction 101 teaches: differentiate your characters! Individualize them!
And why does the spirit of Jane Austen whisper to one character? Is she hallucinating? Very disappointed in this novel.
October 26, 2021
I enjoyed reading this novel of a group of friends who travel together to important places in the life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. The characters are three academic women of a certain age, a married man, and a younger woman with similar persuits. Traveling to Wales and Venice, they are accompanied by Fran's ghostly friend, Jane Austen, otherwise known as The Author.
January 6, 2022
Academics should not write fiction. Well, not all academics but most should not even attempt to write fiction even if it is a topic they know and love. (Umberto Eco is a fine example. He was a leading academic and his fiction is superb.)
In this case, Todd, an expert on Austen and a fan of Shelley, made a book, dare I say, snoozeable.
I was sorely disappointed by this book. I was so desperate to love it for I too love Austen and Shelley and the idea of Austen whispering in the ear of the main character and finding Shelley later on seemed beyond delightful. Any reimagined Austen is catnip to my brain.
But alas, despite the glowing review in WaPo and the weeks long hold at my local library, I found this book to be dull and rambling. After the perfunctory “It’s a truth universally acknowledged…” a few paragraphs later finds us the following:Intro to Jane Austen and Shelley
I read that numerous times after I read the first chapter to see how it tied into the book. It doesn’t, not really. I still don’t get it.
The writing is extraneous and someone needed a new editor. The story meandered and seemed to hold at some points, confused on where to go next. The pictures looked like they were taken by an amateur (and who thought this was a good idea in the first place?) and were particularly fuzzy on my Kindle.
Books can be anything and everything. They can make you think, cry, love, and travel. Difficult topics do not have to be written obtusely nor should fiction. I often think of Salman Rushdie’s quip when he was told that some people find his books difficult to read. His response was that perhaps the person doing the reading wasn’t smart enough to understand his work. I call bullshit on this. I often find that when hoity toity authors come out with works that are deemed difficult what they really are are meditations on their own intelligence bookended by their over extensive vocabulary.
I meander.
Todd’s other works have been praised by people like Hilary Mantel, Emma Donoghue, and Phillipa Gregory so she’s got to be doing something right. But was is it that she’s doing?
This book is more like a 2 stars over 1 as I was so disappointed and confused by what I was reading but somewhere out there people are going to love it. So as long as it is them, and not me.
(P.S. Todd wrote about Aphra Behn, the seventeenth century writer of erotic, poetry, and plays; political propagandist, and spy. I desperately want to read that book but I’m afeared that I will come away disappointed.)
In this case, Todd, an expert on Austen and a fan of Shelley, made a book, dare I say, snoozeable.
I was sorely disappointed by this book. I was so desperate to love it for I too love Austen and Shelley and the idea of Austen whispering in the ear of the main character and finding Shelley later on seemed beyond delightful. Any reimagined Austen is catnip to my brain.
But alas, despite the glowing review in WaPo and the weeks long hold at my local library, I found this book to be dull and rambling. After the perfunctory “It’s a truth universally acknowledged…” a few paragraphs later finds us the following:Intro to Jane Austen and Shelley
I read that numerous times after I read the first chapter to see how it tied into the book. It doesn’t, not really. I still don’t get it.
The writing is extraneous and someone needed a new editor. The story meandered and seemed to hold at some points, confused on where to go next. The pictures looked like they were taken by an amateur (and who thought this was a good idea in the first place?) and were particularly fuzzy on my Kindle.
Books can be anything and everything. They can make you think, cry, love, and travel. Difficult topics do not have to be written obtusely nor should fiction. I often think of Salman Rushdie’s quip when he was told that some people find his books difficult to read. His response was that perhaps the person doing the reading wasn’t smart enough to understand his work. I call bullshit on this. I often find that when hoity toity authors come out with works that are deemed difficult what they really are are meditations on their own intelligence bookended by their over extensive vocabulary.
I meander.
Todd’s other works have been praised by people like Hilary Mantel, Emma Donoghue, and Phillipa Gregory so she’s got to be doing something right. But was is it that she’s doing?
This book is more like a 2 stars over 1 as I was so disappointed and confused by what I was reading but somewhere out there people are going to love it. So as long as it is them, and not me.
(P.S. Todd wrote about Aphra Behn, the seventeenth century writer of erotic, poetry, and plays; political propagandist, and spy. I desperately want to read that book but I’m afeared that I will come away disappointed.)
July 25, 2025
I am giving this a 3, but it should be a 3.4 or so. I enjoyed it and I like Janet Todd's work, but I agree with other reviewers that this was a difficult read. I learned a lot, but I am not sure having to look up so many references while reading a novel is a good thing...and I am a "Jane-ite" of sorts who is also fond of Shelley and the world of Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughter, and the period itself. I suspect there was a lot of personal life and ideas reflected, and the quirkiness of Fran made me want to be Todd's friend. But, the plot line needed some additions and edits; the characters needed more clarity in their stories; and overall, it needed a revision for a cleaner flow. The transition from Venice to the communal living discussions was too abrupt and confusing, although I think that could be a fun novel in and of itself. I copied down many of the lines on aging--sitting on the edge of my 60s, many resonated with insight and humor.
While I found it a challenging read, I found myself wanting to get back to the story and left enjoying what I learned and the characters.
While I found it a challenging read, I found myself wanting to get back to the story and left enjoying what I learned and the characters.
October 11, 2023
Jane Austen judiciously appears as a characteristically snarky presence in this remarkable novel(?) I picked up on a recent visit to Chawton House. Janet Todd weaves an enticing tale about aging, academia, literature and travel from Wales to Venice in pursuit of the Wollstonecraft-Shelley circle, with a hearteningly inspirational ending.
January 3, 2022
I tried. I really tried. I read 66% of this book, forcing myself back to it over multiple days. Just now, I returned it to the library. No novel should be that much work, or talk so much about things that I care so little about. Oh, well.
May 21, 2023
Very rarely am I certain that a book is Not For Me within the first 15 pages. But Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden was a very clear NOPE from the first few paragraphs. The author's style was extremely off-putting. Very disappointing, considering the delightful title and cover.
September 26, 2023
Academic and nuanced. The economic style gives clues for the reader to follow and keep up with the life of Fran, into whose mind Jane Austen puts her two-cents' worth throughout. Shelley does not come across well - he left a trail of dead wives and children in his wake, it seems.
May 12, 2024
3.5 Interesting and a bit strange. Challenging in the style, the way it jumps and philosophises, but also funny, thought provoking, at times sad and at times wistful. I enjoyed it, it will stay with me, but it was a peculiar reading experience.
Currently reading
October 4, 2021Tough going but filled with literary zingers, this novel takes place in an extended present with one character having frequent interactions with the ghost of Jane Austen.
May 21, 2025
I didn’t understand everything that was going on at first, but as I got into it I forgot about that. It then became a comfort read.
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November 28, 2021I'm determined to finish this book... I think. The author is interested in contrasting the sensibilities of Austen and Shelley, and, instead of writing an essay, she's put her ideas into the mouths of a handful of ciphers. No character depth, no atmosphere, and virtually no plot.
Update: Gave up after 80 pages.
Update: Gave up after 80 pages.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews