One of the unexpected and
wonderful perks of getting a novel published is that you’re able to get your
hands on other books early in the form of ARCs (advance reader copies).
So this week I’m giving you a
sneak peek of two of my favourite forthcoming novels I’ve been lucky enough to
read. What’s more, they’re on a theme! Jane Austen lovers rejoice at these two
new responses to one of history’s most loved writers.
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| I <3 ARCs! |
Gill Hornby’s Miss Austen (coming this month in the UK, this April in the US) is the
story of the other Austen sister—Cassandra. Austen novels often end with a
proposal of marriage, but Hornby’s novel begins with one, before our heroine
Cassy’s life is sent in an unexpected direction following the tragic death of
her fiancé. The novel alternates between Jane and Cassandra’s youth, including
the infancy of Jane’s writing, and 1840, when an elderly and frail Cassandra
must protect her late sister’s legacy.
Hornby’s novel is ambitious (she
writes letters by Jane herself!) and touching. I enjoyed being in the
perspective of an older protagonist and the foregrounding of the sisters’
relationship. There is romance in here and keen social observation worthy of
Austen herself, but the heart of the novel is this one key relationship that
helped make Jane Jane.
Natalie Jenner’s The Jane Austen Society (coming this
May) takes us into the twentieth century. Set in the 1940s in Chawton, where
Jane Austen spent the last years of her life, the novel is the (sadly
fictitious) origin story of the Jane Austen Society, which preserves Jane’s
home and possessions for antiquity.
A love of Austen’s novels binds
the ensemble cast together. There’s a lonely doctor, a young war widow, a quiet
farmer, a sad spinster, a Hollywood starlet and an academically-minded maid.
They disagree on their favourite Austen novels, but one thing unites them—their
desire to share Jane with the world.
I loved how discussion of
Austen’s novels, down to quoting lines of her prose, becomes a language that
brings Jenner’s characters together and the echoes of various Austen plotlines
in the conclusions of the society members’ stories. This is a novel that will
reward readers who know their Austen well, but still delight those who do not.
I’d recommend Miss Austen and The Jane Austen Society to all Austenites. Both novels, along with
Molly Greeley’s The Clergyman’s Wife,
which I also reviewed recently, prove there’s still plenty of room for more
novels inspired by Jane.
More of a Bronte fan? My novel,
Bronte’s Mistress, based on the scandalous affair between Branwell Bronte, the
Bronte sisters’ brother, and his employer’s wife, is available for pre-order now! You can also connect with me on
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