Posted by Bel. The time is 2.34pm here in Wellington NZ.

This faux trailer "Jane Austen's Fight Club" is the latest mash-up: Elizabeth Bennett meets Tyler Durden, with a bit of Kill Bill thrown in for good measure. These ladies look fun!



Austen has found herself in back the spotlight recently, with the release of what is now a series of books, starting with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. When I first saw this floating around the internet, I assumed it was some kind of perverse fanfic art.

But no, it was for real - the Noughties unconquerable love of all that is undead, sucking blood, ninjafied, or, alternately, cupcake-sized and so exquisite you hardly bear to bite it (oooh back to biting - there we go!).

Tiger Beatdown guest blogger Garland Grey has written a brilliant piece on Austen, the male author of the new books and how the co-opting of her work is part of a greater issue of white male privilege exploiting minorities in any way possible.

I bet Ms. Austen had to work very hard to hammer out a structure and a flow and a rhythm to the story, and you pull up next to that process in your giant SUV of male privilege and start plugging your electricity and water into it, taking all the work that Austen did to get the thing published, all of the work that made her writing world famous, and you make YOURSELF world famous. And then you talk about how easy it was on NPR, a necessary addendum to the telling of the story of this book. Austen would probably prefer the story of this book to be about HER in some way. But let’s just talk about you and your rip-off.

PS I googled "Jane Austen cupcake" just to check if the internet had actually come full circle, and got this:

Uhh...?

Lou, you are the expert. I'm still stalled 30 pages into Persuasion. Is this Jane Austen recreated in chocolate icing, or did we miss when Te Papa branded their Giant Squid merch for the afternoon tea crowd?

The time is 5.10pm here in Wellington, NZ.
Sometimes the quotes on the front of a book can be immediately heartening. Excellent Women (an encouraging enough title!) was referred to as 'endearing' and 'amusing', which, when judging by the cover, does put you in a positive frame of mind.

I then noted that the quote was from the person who'd written the introduction to the book, rather than from any kind of critique, but decided to forge cheerily ahead anyway.


This kind of ambitiously positive attitude is just the sort sported by the heroine of Barbara Pym's novel it turns out. Mildred Lathbury (what a wonderfully British name) is an excellent woman, self-sufficient and independent, relishing spinsterhood in all its joys.

Her quiet life is thrown into somewhat of a disarray by the arrival of a tempestuous, squabbling couple into the downstairs flat of her previously peaceful home. The husband appears to be attempting to charm her. The wife seems to want to confess all sins to her. Mildred would just like to make sure that the church bazaar is going to run smoothly.

Apparently Pym's style is frequently compared to Jane Austen - and now that I am finally reading my first (!) Austen I can see how this fits. It also reminded me a little of Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm.

This book is filled with delicate humour and superb characterisation. I did find the pace rather slow, not so much a rollicking night out with salacious details, but rather more unwinding like a polite garden party peppered with snatches of shadowy gossip. And sometimes that can be just what you're in the mood for!

--
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym. Recommended as a very light read.
Published in 1952. Set in post-WWII London.
#47 from 'The List'