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lieslindi 's review for:
Mr. & Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy: Two Shall Become One
by Sharon Lathan
This title never appeared in the library's system, and I intended to read it in a bookstore sometime until I decided a root canal justified an indulgence. For all its reasonable cover, it is pretty much porn. The only thing there's more of than coitus is adverbs. I'm not as deadset against them as, say, Ernest Hemingway or E.B. White, but damn. So the prose was amusingly appalling. So was the story. Except there wasn't a story: no plot, no development, only telling and description, nothing but sex and expenditure.
Aha, a new Jane Austen title: Sex and Expenditure. It's not as good as Taxi and Taxidermy or Cunning and Cunnilingus, but it's pretty good.
I was sure Lathan was a fundy Christian before she declared herself one in the acknowledgments (placed at the end): Darcy's a virgin, his Anglican chapel is staffed by a devotee of John Wesley (who founded Methodism), and Elizabeth refers a possible pregnancy as a "blessing." Although Lathan details, with Jean Auel's thoroughness, the physical acts, and describes her characters as wantonly passionate and uninhibited, she avoids any oral-genital contact, and she calls the fucking "loving," as in, "they loved for hours." Yeah, and for the other 21 hours of the day they didn't love each other? Okay, the Darcys wouldn't use coarse language, but Lathan confuses her own religion with theirs.
It's all tell tell tell, and telling with redundancy, wordiness, misspelling, and bizarre, sloppy, and incorrect grammar. They tell each other they love each other, they fuck, and they buy each other stuff, but Lathan gives them no wit, nobility, devotion, or any other characteristic from their source. Instead she gives the reader morsels such as "Bingley nearly was required to physically restrain me"; "in the short time of their acquaintance"; "pausing momentarily"; "usual wont" (my especial favorite); "free reign"; information having "disseminated" (an intransitive verb since when?); "You are from Hertfordshire, I am taken to understand?"; and "[f:]or the subsequent five days, Lizzy slept interminably." Adverbs and redundancy: "Marguerite calmly turned toward her mistress, her face a study in serene indifference, intoning unemotionally ... (96)." Marguerite is "Madeline" once, but goes back to being a daisy before endangering her appendix.
The usual textual inaccuracies and anachronisms: "Darcy House" in London doesn't have the "flamboyant embellishments" Pemberley has. Darcy's father's name is James. Elizabeth calls Darcy "William." Darcy refers to Lady de Bourgh as "Aunt Catherine" (he does not address her). Darcy does address Georgianna as "Georgie." "Georgie" plays "'Ode to Joy' by Beethoven" at Christmas 1816.
Worst of all, the author wrote a sequel not to the novel but to the cinematization with Keira Knightley. She admits as much, and she refers to Elizabeth's visit to Pemberley and Darcy's second proposal as they happened in that film. In which case I wonder she didn't just film a porno instead of writing one.
Aha, a new Jane Austen title: Sex and Expenditure. It's not as good as Taxi and Taxidermy or Cunning and Cunnilingus, but it's pretty good.
I was sure Lathan was a fundy Christian before she declared herself one in the acknowledgments (placed at the end): Darcy's a virgin, his Anglican chapel is staffed by a devotee of John Wesley (who founded Methodism), and Elizabeth refers a possible pregnancy as a "blessing." Although Lathan details, with Jean Auel's thoroughness, the physical acts, and describes her characters as wantonly passionate and uninhibited, she avoids any oral-genital contact, and she calls the fucking "loving," as in, "they loved for hours." Yeah, and for the other 21 hours of the day they didn't love each other? Okay, the Darcys wouldn't use coarse language, but Lathan confuses her own religion with theirs.
It's all tell tell tell, and telling with redundancy, wordiness, misspelling, and bizarre, sloppy, and incorrect grammar. They tell each other they love each other, they fuck, and they buy each other stuff, but Lathan gives them no wit, nobility, devotion, or any other characteristic from their source. Instead she gives the reader morsels such as "Bingley nearly was required to physically restrain me"; "in the short time of their acquaintance"; "pausing momentarily"; "usual wont" (my especial favorite); "free reign"; information having "disseminated" (an intransitive verb since when?); "You are from Hertfordshire, I am taken to understand?"; and "[f:]or the subsequent five days, Lizzy slept interminably." Adverbs and redundancy: "Marguerite calmly turned toward her mistress, her face a study in serene indifference, intoning unemotionally ... (96)." Marguerite is "Madeline" once, but goes back to being a daisy before endangering her appendix.
The usual textual inaccuracies and anachronisms: "Darcy House" in London doesn't have the "flamboyant embellishments" Pemberley has. Darcy's father's name is James. Elizabeth calls Darcy "William." Darcy refers to Lady de Bourgh as "Aunt Catherine" (he does not address her). Darcy does address Georgianna as "Georgie." "Georgie" plays "'Ode to Joy' by Beethoven" at Christmas 1816.
Worst of all, the author wrote a sequel not to the novel but to the cinematization with Keira Knightley. She admits as much, and she refers to Elizabeth's visit to Pemberley and Darcy's second proposal as they happened in that film. In which case I wonder she didn't just film a porno instead of writing one.