The Book in the World

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I’ve fallen behind on this, what with all my reading to cats and humans and Jane Austen conference-attending, but it’s come to my notice that a few book bloggers have said some really nice things about Project recently.

Like Hannah at So Obsessed With,  who said

Honestly, so much could have gone wrong with this novel. And I have to admit that I kind of expected it to. I was intrigued by the summary when I started it, but I had pretty low expectations because I’ve been let down by so many Austen-related books before. That’s the risk you take when you follow a book hook into uncharted territory. However, I’m so pleased to be able to say that The Jane Austen Project far exceeded my expectations – and is already one of my favorite reads of 2017!

And Shawna at Transactions With Beauty, who said

Though an Austen manuscript is unlikely to be found IRL, Flynn’s book really is the next best thing. Highly enjoyable, smart, and quite a page turner.

 

And then there was Naomi at Consumed by Ink, who said

If you are a Jane Austen fan, and even if you aren’t (but especially if you are), you don’t want to miss this one. Sure, a book about Jane Austen and time travel sounds dicey, but The Jane Austen Project is smart, fun, and unputdownable.

This is the part that’s still so weird to me, that after living in my head so long, this book is in the world, and people are reading it.  Thanks so much, you guys! Thanks for reading, for your great blogs, and for spreading the word.

‘A Fictional but Believable Jane’

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Margaret C. Sullivan is a sharp and funny Austen blogger, with a snarky wit that’s a fitting homage to Austen herself. I’ve been a fan of hers for a long time — she was the sort of ideal reader I had in mind while writing The Jane Austen Project — so I was particularly excited to wake up this morning to find she’d reviewed my novel and liked it.

The Servant Problem

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Catherine Curzon,  aka Madame Gilflurt, authoress and proprietor of the excellent Georgian-themed blog “A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life,” graciously hosted me to ruminate about servants. You can read it here.

Thank you so much for having me, Madame G!

Jane Austen at 60

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Virginia Woolf photograph by Gisèle Freund, 1939 Photograph: National Portrait Gallery

I’ve read this before, what Virginia Woolf wrote in 1924, but I just came across it accidentally in search of something else. It still makes me cry, because she was right, as Woolf generally is; or if not right, at the very least, wonderfully persuasive.

“She would have stayed in London, dined out, lunched out, met famous people, made new friends, read, travelled, and carried back to the quiet country cottage a hoard of observations to feast upon at leisure. And what effect would all this have had upon the six novels that Jane Austen did not write? She would not have written of crime, of passion, or of adventure. She would not have been rushed by the importunity of publishers or the Battery of friends into slovenliness or insincerity. But she would have known more. Her sense of security would have been shaken. Her comedy would have suffered. She would have trusted less (this is already perceptible in Persuasion) to dialogue and more to reflection to give us a knowledge of her characters. Those marvelous little speeches which sum up in a few minutes’ chatter all that we need in order to know an Admiral Croft or a Mrs. Musgrove forever, that shorthand, hit-or-miss method which contains chapters of analysis and psychology, would have become too crude to hold all that she now perceived of the complexity of human nature. She would have devised a method, clear and composed as ever, but deeper and more suggestive, for conveying not only what people say, but what they leave unsaid; not only what they are, but (if we may be pardoned the vagueness of the expression) what life is.”