Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife, again and again, and again....

The other day I bought Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife on pure impulse. I'm a Pride and Prejudice junkie, but I have steadfastly refused to read any of the many sequels that have been written. I generally turn up my nose at any sequel undertaken by authors other than the original as they invariably suffer by comparison. And, it has always seemed highly unlikely that any author could live up the standard set by Ms. Austen. But despite that fact, and despite knowing that it was probably going to be rife with cliche and riddled with euphemisms, I could resist no longer. Who after all has not wanted to know what happened after Darcy and Elizabeth and Bingley and Jane wed? Who has not wondered what happened to the obsequious Mr. Collins and plain, pragmatic Charlotte, and whether the irascible Lady Catherine DeBourgh ever gets her comeuppance?

What rot. What rubbish. What panty drenching, bosom heaving tripe.

I loved it.

The author tries way too hard to mimic the formal but effusive Victorian vernacular of Pride and Prejudice. Now, since Jane Austen actually spoke that way, her writing and her dialogue is, though sometimes a little laborious, nonetheless fluid and unaffected. Unfortunately, I think its very difficult (if not impossible) for a contemporary author to adopt this manner of parlance without sounding very stilted and contrived. Ms. Berdoll is no exception. At times the writing is merely artificial and pretentious; others it is downright ridiculous.

BUT...

Behind all the petticoat twisting frippery and grandiloquent blather, is some good writing. And I was so engaged by the continued story of Darcy and Elizabeth et al, that I found it pretty easy to overlook once I had made up my mind to just enjoy the book for what it was; an enjoyable piece of lascivious and irreverent (to Austen purists, that is) fluff. And I think that Ms. Berdoll did a decent job remaining true to the characters as they were originally written by Jane Austen. I recognized Darcy and Elizabeth as the same people to whom I had bid a fond but sad farewell at the end of Pride and Prejudice.

But what made the book a worthwhile read, are the absolutely scorching scenes between Darcy and Elizabeth. What Austen fan hasn't imagined Darcy and Elizabeth in a sweaty, naked embrace, snogging the life out of each other the way we all knew they would have had they been unencumbered by Eighteenth century convention and theological contraints? Who among those esteemed ranks has not hoped that the long suffering Darcy would simply ravish Elizabeth and be done with it, despite her protests, which we all knew were a sham anyway? Yeah...she wanted it. And in Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife, she gets it. A lot.

Writing sex is hard. I've tried it and the results were....unfortunate. Nn keeping with the very chaste attitudes and behavior of that period, Ms. Berdoll really had no choice but to employ a variety of cliches and euphemisms. But I found it to be reasonably well done, and in a really puzzling kind of incongruity with the rest of the book, not at all ridiculous.

Let me put it this way...reading some of those scenes made me want to crawl through the pages, elbow the Mistress of Pemberly right out of her tester bed onto her batiste clad derriere and then ride her husband sideways. I've always been somewhat enamored of Darcy. His arrogance, his recalcitrance, his audacity; those qualities alone are enough to completely enthrall a woman who can't resist a mysterious glowering rogue. But to know that such obduracy is merely a facade behind which smolders a nature both passionate and tender, well....((Swoon)). This book reveals him to be the kind of lover we all imagined he would be. Yum. I guess it's kind of like...highbrow porn; a Harlequin romance all grown up and really, really horny.

So...it's not great literature. I'm sure some would argue that it's not even very good literature. If you look, you will see that it did not get very good reviews at Amazon. Normally, I would never even consider reading such nonsense. But sometimes, a gal needs a generous serving of really good romance with a side helping of mind blowing sex. This book delivers just that, even if it is couched in some extravagant and hackneyed prose.

It's a good beach read. But make sure there's a Cabana Boy nearby.

Now erm...anyone know where I can get my hands on some breeches and a waistcoat?