Austenland
2007, Bloomsbury, ISBN: 9781596912854
Midnight in Austenland
2012, Bloomsbury, ISBN: 9781608196258
These were a bit of a tangent for me, but I have to say that I enjoyed them more than I thought I would.
Shannon Hale is the author of several Juvenile fairy-tale-esque stories that I have enjoyed - most particularly Princess Academy, The Books of Bayern, and the graphic novels Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack. (I recommend them all - they are amazing.)
With this duo, Hale sets off into a (presumably imaginary) world where rich young (or not so young) things bored or tormented by modern life and modern loves sequester themselves in the Regency version of an SCA convention, proceed to be romanced (carefully and properly) by handsome young actors in tight Regency pants, and enjoy a few weeks respite from the raging modernity by relaxing in a world where class and gender roles are rigidly imposed.
Ooookay. Sure. On the surface, that sounds a little kooky, but lets be honest here - this seems perfectly logical to me. There have been umpteen different revivals and restagings of Austen's works, women like being romanced, and just about everyone can have fun with a costume party if they let themselves.
In Austenland, our first protagonist is Jane Hayes. She works in marketing, and she's never had a "real" boyfriend. When her elderly aunt notices a certain DVD hiding in her potted plants, Jane is sent off on an adventure to clear the romantic preconceptions from her mind and heart once and for all, so she can settle into a rational life with realistic expectations of love that don't involve beautifully-worded protestations of infatuation or incidents of feet-sweeping-off-of. No one who reads this sort of book will be in the least surprised that this doesn't exactly go according to plan.
In Midnight in Austenland, after having settled our first protagonist (no spoilers) we're treated to a brokenhearted recent divorcee who, while extremely intelligent in many ways, is totally blinded to the reality of the trainwreck that was her marriage. This vacation to fantasy Austenland is an attempt to see herself as something more than an abandoned woman and a mother. Her hopes of finding herself are thwarted from the start as a series of unfortunate and perplexing events culminate in a possible murder! Are the actors simply outdoing themselves, or is something truly afoot?
These are not high literature. They are not classics, they are not treasures of the nation (I would argue strenuously that Rapunzel's Revenge IS) and they are not intellectual reads. They are pure, unadulterated Austen-flavored fluff. I enjoyed the hell out of both of them!
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