Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Five stars for a fragment followed by a pastiche? Yes indeed, for I believe that were this novel published under Jane Austen's name alone, most readers would simply accept it as one of hers from beginning to end. Not one of her greatest, perhaps, but even second-tier Austen is worth five stars. And speaking for myself, a book that I merely intended to dip into out of curiosity first seduced, then gripped me, and left me in the end with tears of pleasure. Jane Austen started the novel that her family called "Sanditon" in early 1817, the year of her death. She wrote twelve chapters and then abandoned it. The fragment was not published until 1925, and is still available in several collections of Austen's minor works, such as that in the Oxford Classics edition. I myself have owned a copy for over fifty years, but was inspired to read it only by reading Anthony Lane's article in the New Yorker of March 13, 2017. Lane suggests that the fragment is a masterpiece in its own right, but I confess I did not find it so. I do agree with him, however, on his major point: that Austen turns her satirical pen to the themes of health and hypochondria, often with hilarious results, at a time when she must surely have been alarmed by her own failing health—a poignant theme when seen in that light. I was also struck by Austen's departure from her normal world. The setting, Sanditon, is a fledgling seaside resort on Britain's south coast, but it is not treated simply as a convenient locale for social interaction, as both Lyme Regis and Bath are in Persuasion. Rather, we look behind the scenes at Sanditon's two entrepreneurs, the gentleman booster Mr. Parker and the money-grubbing Lady Denham, "born to Wealth but not to Education." As a result, the role of money, which has always been a strong subtext in Austen's novels, here becomes a major theme; we have taken a clear step away from the rural villages and landed estates of vintage Austen, and are now in a distinctly more mercantile world. Preparing this for a book club, I stopped where Austen herself put down her pen, and played with ideas on how she might have completed it. It is extraordinarily difficult. For by the twelfth chapter in her four previous novels, Austen had already introduced all the major characters and set the plot in motion; alliances have been made and battle lines set; young people have already fallen in love. In musical terms, she would have already completed her exposition and might even have started the development. But not so here. Many characters have been introduced, it is true, but if they are developed at all it is as figures of satire: blowhards, hypocrites, hypochondriacs, and so on. With one exception: Charlotte Heywood, a young woman with her head very much on her shoulders, whom Mr. Parker invites to stay with his family for the summer. But so far, Charlotte is presented merely as a clear-eyed observer, a mirror in which to reflect the foibles of others; we learn very little about her as a person in her own right. There are a few more young female characters who might be developed in secondary roles, but an almost total absence of sympathetic men. It is true that there is much talk about Mr. Parker's younger brother Sidney, witty and wealthy in equal measure, who is expected to join them at any moment, but Austen stopped before he and Charlotte could meet. I thought for a while and came up with a few things, then turned to "Another Lady's" completion. And was immediately fascinated. "So that's how she goes on," I found myself saying, before realizing that the "she" in this case was not Jane Austen but her anonymous collaborator! And I remained in this ambiguity for much of the rest of the book, essentially making no distinction between the two authors or their styles. I do not want to say too much more except that Another Lady does indeed develop Sidney Parker, and brings down two of his eligible male friends from London with him to correct the gender imbalance. Other than that, she plays fair by working entirely with the characters and themes introduced by Austen herself. Without plagiarizing, she also allows herself echoes of other works. Sidney Parker, for instance, has a lot of the organizing abilities of Austen's Emma Woodhouse (though substituting casual charm for her officiousness), and there are a number of those social set pieces that play such important roles in EMMA and MANSFIELD PARK: excursions around the shore, a carriage trip to a rival resort, and a grand Assembly ball. Even an elopement, but I won't say whose. And she keeps her readers on their toes, with many twists of the plot, only one of which strained my credulity at all. Some were genuine surprises; others I guessed before Charlotte herself did. But that too is part of the Austen style, that the heroine should fail to see something that is increasingly obvious to others. As Sidney says at one point, "Caution and Miss Heywood go very well together." Charlotte's caution, though, is a great part of her attractiveness, and it makes it wonderfully exciting when she finally lets it go. And any caution that a reader may have in picking up such a hybrid of a novel can safely be let go also; many of the most beautiful blooms are hybrids.