Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict Laurie Viera Rigler Grade: C+ Sensuality: Subtle I'm not quite sure what I expected when I cracked open Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, but it wasn't a time travel novel.

After Courtney Stone discovers her fiance with the wedding cake baker and learns that her closest male friend knew about said fiance's infidelities, she does what she often does when in need of escape - she reads her beloved Jane Austen. But when she wakes up in the morning, she's no longer in modern Los Angeles. Instead she wakes up in the countryside in Regency England, as Jane Mansfield, a woman of 30 and on the shelf, with a mother who threatens her with an insane asylum if she doesn't get with the program. That means allowing the £15,000 a year Mr. Edgeworth to court her, and if all goes well, wed her.

One of my main problems with this book was simply the name "Jane Mansfield", because in my mind I kept expecting her to be Fanny Price, and she wasn't. She wasn't Elizabeth Bennet either, although her father bore more of a resemblance to Mr. Bennet than her mother did to Mrs. Bennet. That issue aside, though, was simply the confusion I encountered throughout the book - much like, I suspect, Courtney felt when she was channeling Jane, and then becoming Jane. In particular, her visit to a fortune teller confused me; it got very metaphysical and I was lost, and was even more lost to discover that she'd previously had conversations with her ladies' maid's brother and talked with him about things only Courtney would know. The time-space continuum can be a bitch, you know?

The relationship that develops between Jane and Edgeworth is rather nice. The two don't really get the chance to know one another, but then, that's how it was during a courtship 200 years ago. Her relationship with Mary, Edgeworth's sister, provided more depth, and indeed, Mary was a good, good friend to Jane. The dialogue throughout sounded authentic, and clearly the author's obsession with Austen is nearly as strong as her lead character's is. It must have broken the author's heart to write the scene in which Jane meets Jane Austen...and comes off sounding like a loon.

Given that I liked the love relationship that developed throughout the course of the story, and the friendship between Jane and Mary, why isn't my grade higher? Well, it's that metaphysical stuff again, which takes an odd, albeit presumably romantic, turn in the diary entry that ends the book, as well as the author's whole 19th century body odor fixation. Yes, they didn't bathe, they didn't use antiperspirants, and they smelled...I get it...I don't need a reminder on every page, even if I did appreciate how much energy was involved in arranging a bath. I'm pretty sure if I time traveled 200 years ago, I'd be stuck on the stench too, but that doesn't mean I want to read about it over and over and over again.

One last word about the romance; Jane has visions throughout much of the book of an incident that could incriminate Edgeworth as a bounder and a cad. When, at the end, they finally get around to discussing it, I was disappointed in their conversation as it didn't make much sense to me. Also, I'm not quite sure why Edgeworth put up for so long with Jane's on-again/off-again affections. If he's in a sense channeling Courtney's ex-best friend, who was secretly in love with her, I could see it. Otherwise, I'm not quite sure why he didn't take his fortune elsewhere.

TTFN, Laurie Likes Books

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