Book Review - "Darcy's Story" by Janet Aylmer

Between reading this book and being in the midst of PBS' "The Complete Jane Austen" series, I have been submerged in Jane Austen's world the last few weeks. And you know what? I like it. Everyone is so civilized, and there are parties all the time and nobody seems to actually work for a living. They just have some sort of stipend allotted to them and they ride around in carriages and drink tea. I like tea.

Anyway, Darcy's Story is one in the ever growing genre of "sequels" to Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, only they're not written by Jane Austen. This is actually the second of this genre that I've read. A couple of years ago, as part of my now defunct book club, I read Mr. Darcy's Daughters by Elizabeth Aston. I think I liked this one much more because I knew and liked the character of Darcy, but I had not "met" the daughters.

We see a new side to Darcy where we learn that he really is an arrogant snob, but for all the right reasons. See, the thing is, he's actually shy and socially inept. Really. I always wanted to know Darcy's side of the story regarding his meeting and tortured courtship of Elizabeth Bennett, and that is exactly the story this book tells.

Aylmer tries to write in the style of Jane Austen and does it well enough; she also often uses direct quotes from P & P. What I liked best is that she parallels the timeline in P & P so that we see what Darcy is doing when we don't see him in P & P.
Is this great literature? Absolutely not. Could it stand alone without P & P? No way. This book is only for tried and true fans of "Pride and Prejudice" - which I am. Otherwise, it's not worth the time it takes to read.