'Longbourn' by Jo Baker

Having just finished writing a fan fiction of my own, I thought I'd like to read more fan fiction by others. 

MY THOUGHTS:

The titular setting is the legendary home in Pride and Prejudice where two radically different lifestyles orbit along together. The mismatched Bennet parents and their five daughters are, of course, well known by generations of readers. Jo Baker now decides to reveal the tale of their servants, who deal with the unmentionable but vital aspects of keeping life functioning smoothly. These five know full well that their security depends upon the caprice of their employers.   

Baker's author blurb informs us that her own forebears had been employed in service, so she knows full well that instead of attending the Netherfield ball she would have stayed home with the washing up. My ancestry is equally humble, so I found this story to be revealing and significant from the get go. 

Our main character is a young housemaid named Sarah, who works under Mrs and Mr Hill, the housekeeper, and butler. There is also Polly, a pert adolescent maid who is learning on the job. One day the Bennets hire a new young footman named James, who Sarah suspects of concealing some secret. It turns out James has far more to hide than he's even aware of himself.

Meanwhile, Sarah's fascination is stirred by a freed slave turned servant named Ptolemy, who works on Mr Bingley's estate. She's attracted to Tol's sprightliness and the wider world he represents, yet something about the mysterious and evasive behavior of James also intrigues her. I love how this romance, in all it's everyday, sometimes sordid routine, plays out against that more famous plot that we all know so well. 

The Bennets, their neighbors and all other familiar characters are totally true to canon, yet we're offered deeper, richer ways of understanding them, since we now see them as their underlings do. For example, it takes an insightful helper like Sarah to sense that Elizabeth's new married life isn't totally angst free, as she adjusts to the expectations of being mistress of such an intimidating address as Pemberley. 

After forming my own thoughts, I turned to other reviews, expecting a bit of flak, for Jane Austen's most devoted fans tend to deify her and consider her work untouchable. Yet I was stunned nonetheless by the sheer volume of cutting and unkind reviews of one and two stars on Goodreads. Holy moly! I guess Jo Baker must've known she was prodding a sacred cow. What amazed me most was the vitriolic content of some of these reviews, because these reactive people might've been reading a totally different book to me!

Some called it humorless compared to the great Jane Austen, yet to me it brimmed with wry observations that kept me grinning. How ironic that the same people who complain of no humour evidently take Pride and Prejudice extremely seriously. 

Others call Sarah a whinger, yet I considered her to be wise, astute, and far more gracious than some of those big-nobs deserved. I suspect some of the disgruntled readers resent Sarah's insights into sides of their favourite characters they refuse to acknowledge. Apparently suggesting that Darcy comes across as a granite block in the eyes of the working class, or that Lizzy is somewhat preoccupied and insensitive to her servant's priorities is a crime to some. And heaven forbid that anyone should feel sympathy for Collins (that easy-to-please young man) or Lydia (merely a child seduced by a master manipulator). 

Come on peeps, Pride and Prejudice is a novel, not a sacred text! Please don't be so blinkered about the sanctity of your favourite characters that you resist an opportunity to see how they may come across to others! I suspect those who do so might be the sort of readers who also resist real life revelations about themselves. This book is a refreshing invitation to expand our outlooks, and it's sad to see that so many diehard Janeites refuse to take it as such.

Some reviewers object to the TMI (too much information) factor in passages such as this. 

'The young ladies might behave like they were smooth and sealed as alabaster statues underneath their clothes, but then they would drop their soiled shifts on the bedchamber floor to be whisked away and cleansed, and would thus reveal themselves to be the frail, leaking, forked bodily creatures they really were. Perhaps that was why they spoke instructions at her over an embroidery hoop or over the top of a book: she had scrubbed away their sweat, their stains, their monthly blood; she knew they weren't as rarified as angels and so they just couldn't look her in the eye.' 

I get that this sort of straight talk isn't everyone's jam. Since this particular description occurs on the second page of the story, it's an early invitation for the squeamish to instantly abandon the book rather than read the whole thing and then slam it. I think stark realism like this is handy for revealing the disingenuous quality of the nineteenth century when facts of life were routinely swept beneath the carpet.

One particular plot twist (which I can't spoil here) inevitably causes some readers' hackles to rise. They insist, 'It's because Jane Austen herself didn't write it in.' Hmm, perhaps she simply didn't know about it. Even I object to the type of fan fiction that contradicts and changes canon, but Longbourn doesn't do this. The skeleton in the closet which I'm skirting around is consistent with Austen's unfolding of events. Baker never once destroys the Pride and Prejudice canvas, but merely offers us a broader vista from which to view it. 

So after my rant about the ranters, my final verdict is that I loved this story for its boldness and its beautiful imagery. As far as Pride and Prejudice spin-offs go, it's a winner in my opinion. Now, some reckless soul should write a novel depicting Wickham as the put-upon and misunderstood young man he presented himself as being. Not because I admire him, which I certainly don't, but because it would be interesting to watch the fur and feathers fly. 

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