Pages:
352
Publisher:
Chicken House
Release
Date: 1st
September 2016
Edition:
UK proof, review
copy
Other
Titles by this Author: The Things We Did For Love, After
Iris, Flora
in Love, All
About Pumpkin, Time
for Jas
A
spirited, witty and fresh reimagining of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Lydia is the youngest Bennet sister and
she's sick of country life – instead of sewing and reading, she longs for
adventure. When a red-coated garrison arrives in Merryton, Lydia’s life turns
upside down. As she falls for dashing Wickham, she’s swept into a whirlwind
social circle and deposited in a seaside town, Brighton. Sea-bathing,
promenades and scandal await – and a pair of intriguing twins. Can Lydia find
out what she really wants – and can she get it?
I’ve had a bit of a Pride and Prejudice year with my first
re-read since I was 17 and Curtis Sittenfeld’s brilliant Eligible, and Lydia was
the perfect addition.
Lydia is a character that I've never
fully got on board with, either in adaptations, the book itself or the many
re-tellings and re-imaginings I've read over the years, until Lydia. I finally got her. She stopped being
the annoying younger Bennet sister who caused trouble and put her sisters’
futures into jeopardy and become someone unjustly disregarded by everyone as
silly and left out by her older sisters. Lydia became likeable and sympathetic
and it’s made me want to re-read Pride
and Prejudice again with that new perspective.
As Lydia wrote of her adventures
and related the parts of Jane and Lizzie’s stories that I’m so familiar with I got
little buzzes of happiness, but I was eventually overcome with curiosity as to
how this new dynamic to Lydia’s story would incorporate with what I knew. I loved
seeing Brighton – a city I’m very familiar with – come to life in the late 18th
century and the reflections of what was happening back in Longbourn, but it was
even nicer to see Lydia grow and change during her time by the sea. I really
loved the spin that was put on that time that we never really saw in the
original novel.
Natasha Farrant took a few takes
on Austen that we’d actually discussed in the past and made them strong
features of the novel which I really liked. Mrs Bennet’s hysteric need to marry
her daughters was out of fear of them ending up destitute – she’s not entirely
silly; Wickham’s motives, though wrong, were understandable; and the fact that
marriage really was all about money in Austen’s time – Jane and Lizzie were
incredibly lucky to love the rich men they married.
But most of all, I loved that
Lydia’s ending felt so different to P&P – it felt worthy of the character I
fell in love with during this novel. Marrying Wickham almost seemed like a
punishment for her actions in Austen’s book, something that would inevitably
end in unhappiness, but Lydia got her happy ending in Lydia which was really lovely to see. I finished this book with a
great big smile on my face and you really can’t ask for more than that.
Lydia
is a fresh,
affectionate and respectful take on Pride
and Prejudice and really manages to keep Austen’s original at its heart.
Sophie
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