Longbourn in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

Jan 24, 2014 Jeff Scott rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, audiobooks, england-fiction, downton-abbey

Jo Baker provides a clever combination of Pride and Prejudice and Downton Abbey in her book Longbourn. The book chronicles the life of a housemaid in the Bennett household, complete with daily travails and the behind the scenes aspect of Pride and Prejudice. While most of the book focuses on the downstairs of the Bennett household, it shows how decisions by the Bennett’s impact them. What’s most clever about the book is how Jo Baker is able to mimic Austen’s work and adapt it to the life of a se Jo Baker provides a clever combination of Pride and Prejudice and Downton Abbey in her book Longbourn. The book chronicles the life of a housemaid in the Bennett household, complete with daily travails and the behind the scenes aspect of Pride and Prejudice. While most of the book focuses on the downstairs of the Bennett household, it shows how decisions by the Bennett’s impact them. What’s most clever about the book is how Jo Baker is able to mimic Austen’s work and adapt it to the life of a servant. Sarah must endure her daily tasks, but the introduction of a new footman, James, complicates matters. Furthermore, the introduction of new neighbors, the Bingleys, impacts both the lives of the Bennett’s and her own life as well.

Sarah’s life is one of drudgery. The story starts off with her getting up before the crack of dawn, filling up buckets of water with a freezing pump handle, and then slipping in pig shit. This is not the most glamorous of positions. Sarah’s life is one of hardship. She is an orphan and remembers the times when she had a family. There is always that time of happiness she can look back upon that contrasts so sharply with the hardship of her daily life. In contrast, the other housemaid Polly has always been an orphan so to her this life is as good as it gets. Everything is thrown into disorder with the introduction of the new footman James who mysteriously enters the household without any notice. Sarah’s growing suspicion of his origin goes along with her growing infatuation of him providing the perfect Austen formula to this story.

Everything mirrors Pride and Prejudice with heady Sarah trying to expose James, becoming infatuated with another (as if he were a suitor), and then a happily ever after…almost. James’s back story is where things are diverted. It’s both shocking and fascinating. It provides a level of detail that terribly missing during the timeline of these books. The Napoleonic Wars are some conversational footnote for the household, but through James’s eyes, we see so much more of what it was like.

Baker paints the main characters from Pride and Prejudice as larger than life. When Sarah addresses Mr. Darcy, she speaks into his cravat. Sarah’s reaction seems to embody how most fans of Pride and Prejudice would feel about the characters, larger than life, god-like. It further makes Sarah’s actions all the more brave and the ending all the more satisfying. ...more

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Mar 11, 2014 Melissa rated it really liked it

Shelves: austen-for-everyone

A great way to invert Pride and Prejudice in a way that hasn't been done before. This was a five star read for me, right up until about Lizzie's wedding. I'm not sure the point of all the wandering about for years and extended "epilogue"-ness of those last pages. It seemed very much about agency and free will but I don't know why it had to take so long. ...more

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Sep 03, 2015 Cin rated it liked it

I enjoyed Elizabeth Bennett not being so perfect. The life of the Longbourn servants was just as entertaining. The book does start off slow but hang in there the pace picks up.

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