I love Jane Austen, but I Didn't Love Death at Pemberly.

Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

And I wanted to love Death at Pemberly. It's Jane Austen! And a mystery! What's not to love? But I put off reading this novel because even though this is written by PD James, I've been absolutely horrified at the other P and P sequels I've read before. But thus far I've been pleasantly surprised. I found myself effortlessly slipping back into that world and even though I knew it was coming,  the introduction of the murder came as an abrupt surprise because I found myself so engrossed in the day to day life of the Darcys. Props to James because conveying that kind of surprise in a genre with such established conventions is not easy.

And then I read more of the book, and the more I read, the more disappointed I became. While James actually does a decent job at capturing the spirit of Austen's prose, the mystery itself, which started off with such promise, just falls flat. I won't say what happened in case you might actually want to read Death Comes to Pemberly, but I will say that the ending was a huge anti-climatic let down. In fact, it was so anti-climatic that I initially thought that it couldn't possibly be the ending, but sadly, it had an air of terribly written P and P fan fic.

Honestly, just go read Pride and Prejudice again. Or some of PD James's other novels. Just don't read Death at Pemberly.


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That Jane Austen, she could write

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than women, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant."

Sigh.......This is from The Annotated Persuasion (page 452), edited by David M. Shapard

Since I'm currently lacking in real life romance I read this passage from Persuasion when I feel the need for a little romance. I pull this book off the shelf, turn to page 452 and read Frederick Wentworth's letter to Anne Elliot and I float away in a cloud of romance. 

(Also, I can't recommend David M. Shapard's annotated editions of Jane Austen enough. I've read Austen over and over again since I was in college, but these annotated editions enriched my reading experience of Austen a hundred fold. Seriously people--go buy them! Buy them all! They are more than worth the money.)