Monday, December 31, 2012

Book 50: The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy by Maya Slater


This is the last of the books that I borrowed from my sister, who suggested that I read this after The Casual Vacancy to cheer myself up.  And she was right; I did need to read something happy, unfortunately this book didn’t do it for me.

As you would expect from the title, this book gives Mr. Darcy’s perspective of the events in Pride and Prejudice.  In the beginning he is unhappy to be stuck in the country, when he would rather be in London or at home with his sister.  He meets the Bennets and is decidedly unimpressed.  Upon learning that his friend Bingley wants to marry Jane Bennet, of whom he has heard some pretty horrible tales, he plots to detach his friend from this unfortunate entanglement.  At the same time he finds himself falling for Jane’s sister Elizabeth and no matter what he does he can’t stop thinking about her.

When it stuck to characters from the original book, I enjoyed the story.  But when Slater started elaborating his story to include debaucheries with Lord Byron, I got incredibly bored.  I’m sure it was meant to scandalize me, but it was pretty poorly conceived.  However, I did enjoy the rest of the book and would be open to other stories from Slater in the future.

No comments:

Post a Comment