Linda Berdoll

Contains all the filthy details you wish the original book had! Berdoll maintains the language of the period, so never fear, your virgin ears will not be assaulted by trashy modern lingo. It's explicit, sorta, in a very erudite kind of way. Let's just say if your fifth grader picks it up they probably won't know what's going on. Frankly, I find the whole thing adorable. And quite naughty. Fanfiction at its best!

Rereading this was a pleasure. The author's salacious investigation of the sexual show more history of Ms. Austen's beloved characters is the backstory I want. It's also fun to imagine the life that continues on at Pemberly and the events of wartime and the marriages of other side characters. show less

I am a huge Jane Austen fan, so much so that I read every bit of published fan fiction that I can get my hands on (often to disastrous results). Some are decent, but most are pretty awful. Of those, some truly fall beneath the heading 'atrocious.' Berdoll's The Bar Sinister is one such. She is one of the Austen-inspired writers who attempts to write in Jane Austen's style, by which I mean she pretty much refuses to use any words shorter than three syllables. She also likes to pretend that show more she knows foreign languages, especially Latin.

I have found that the best of the Austen-inspired works do not try too hard to capture her style of language and merely to do right by the characters. The reason that this is better is that these authors are modern; they are not from Jane Austen's time and her language does not come naturally. An author using words she does not know in an effort to sound classy and scholarly has the reverse effect. Words are misused and sentences fail to flow, as words have so obviously been substituted in for the originals after perusal of thesauri and dictionaries. I include here a sample of Berdoll's diction from the first page of the book:

"As each and every muddy mile they travelled diminished the distance betwixt Elisabeth and the awesome duty that awaited her as mistress of such a vast estate, she became ever more uneasy. It was not that she had only then fully comprehended what awaited her, for she had. At least as comprehensibly as was possible.
Hitherto, there had been the excitement of the wedding, and moreover, the anticipation of connubial pleasures with Mr. Darcy that buffered her from the daunting devoir that lay ahead."

These sentences are fairly mild as her language goes, but they get the idea across. Berdoll will never use the word between if she can say betwixt. She will also refer to the act of love making by every imaginable, old-timey term possible (and some that should not have been, such as many of her forays into Latin). I will finish complaining about the writing momentarily after an illustration that Berdoll does not know what words mean. On page 353 of my edition, Lizzy mouths I love you to Darcy and "he wordlessly said, 'I know.'" Wordlessly means that there should be know quotation marks, you dolt! Her writing makes the book, already one of the most absurd stories I have encountered, and makes the book possibly the worst I have ever read from cover to cover.

The story itself is truly atrocious. Lizzy and Darcy, when not having sex (a shockingly rare occurrence), encounter numerous personal difficulties: an insane footman who kidnaps Elisabeth and tries to rape her, a poor shot by Mr. Collins that nearly deafens Darcy permanently, a miscarriage and a stillbirth that nearly kills Elisabeth. And this is what happens to the characters Berdoll likes.

Berdoll hates Bingley. She must, because she has decided that he and Jane do not have a good marriage. Where Darcy and Lizzy are constantly soaked in various forms of connubial pleasure (which sometimes involve a mirror), Bingley does not manage to actually deflower Jane until after a few nights of marriage, during which he missed. There are no words. But, rake that he obviously is, Bingley manages not only to impregnate Jane (five or more times), but to also get a poor woman sick with tuberculosis pregnant with a bastard. Seriously. This happened.

Collins dies after getting chased into a pond by some bees. He lands upside down, gets stuck and drowns. For real real. Colonel Fitzwilliam falls in love with Elisabeth, which he feels guilty about. His guilt propels him to volunteer to go fight Napoleon (honestly referred to as Nappy within the 450 pages of dreck I read through). Georgiana, who is in love with him, follows him, enlisting as a nurse. He gets a little bit blown up, but survives, thanks to Georgiana's loving ministrations. When they finally return, brought back by an irate Darcy, they get married, because bum leg or not, Georgiana is preggers. Yup, shy wallflower Georgiana Darcy took charge and got herself a baby out of wedlock. I think not.

Wickham is found (supposedly posthumously) to be Darcy's brother (maybe), since Darcy's dad slept around (the sadness of which killed the former Mrs. Darcy). For this reason, Darcy donates money to Wickham and Lydia's litter of brats. Despite the fact that Wickham fathered a son on a serving girl at Pemberley when he and Darcy were young (they both slept with the girl, who later had a 'relationship' with the crazy footman mentioned earlier) and that Wickham (unknowingly but still) shot and killed this progeny while deserting the army in France. And even so, the book ends with the news that he is still alive. Great. I would not have finished this suck-fest, if not for the sheer joy of ripping it apart (figuratively, although literally is also tempting).

P.S. This book was republished as Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, so avoid that too (or just stay away from this author in general).

P.P.S. Linda Berdoll, if Jane Austen were a vampire (as is the case in many books now), she would suck you dry with dispatch to prevent any further such disgrace being done to her characters. show less

I had lots of fun reading this one.

The next thing I have to say is that if even the very idea of "Jane Austen" combined with "sex" makes you uncomfortable, stop reading right now, and go do something else to make you forget that you read the beginning of this sentence and the title of this book.

This novel is one person's idea about what happened to Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet after the last pages of [Pride and Prejudice]. The subtitle of this book is "Pride and Prejudice continues," show more which leads some people to refer to it as a sequel, which in my view is just nonsense. Others have called [Mr Darcy Takes a Wife] fanfiction, and although I can see that comparison, I don't see any evidence that it actually was. For one thing, it's much longer and also more structurally organized than any fanfic I've ever read. I looked at it as a soap opera version of what could have happened after P&P.

Okay, so this is no literary masterpiece. There isn't any nuance, symbolism, ah-ha moments . . . but there are some pretty entertaining bits and I had no guilt over skipping the boring parts. As I said, structurally it was okay, although on a sentence-by-sentence level it got kinda strange. At times it felt like the author wrote the story, and then went through with a 19th century thesaurus and replaced solid words with odd archaic ones. Many times I stopped and thought "that sentence actually doesn't make any sense." But I just moved on. Now, I think some of this language was tongue-in-cheek and was supposed to be fun, if not actually funny. Judging by the horrified reviews, the joke was lost on many readers. Well, many have attempted to imitate [[Jane Austen]] and as of yet no one has succeeded, so what can you expect?

As for the sex, yes, there are some steamy bits in the first half of the novel. Mr Darcy was hot and bothered through the entirety of [Pride and Prejudice], so this author lets him finally get his release. A few times. As erotica goes, it's pretty tame stuff. Despite that, many reviewers seem to have a Victorian ideal of Jane Austen, and are concerned about all the spinning in her grave she's up to since the publication of [Mr Darcy Takes a Wife]. Personally, I don't think Austen needs any 21st century readers to defend her honour. Reading all these 1 star reviews, I've learned that there are "Jane Austen purists" in the world, and from what they write, they seem like a dour, stuffy bunch who would be no fun at a party. Really, I've read some reviews that sound like they were written by Caroline Bingley. .

I also find it curious that some readers were "disappointed" by [Mr Darcy Takes a Wife]. Disappointment suggests that there were expectations of something--Jane Austen reincarnated, perhaps? Since I went into this book fully confident that it was terrible, I was quite delighted that it wasn't as bad as I'd expected.

Recommended for:: it's not serious, it's supposed to be fun. Good for P&P fans who want a beach read. show less

Like many Austen fans I've dipped now and then into P&P-land where everyone that's ever read P&P has written a sequel. Some are good, some are awful and some are wonderful. Linda Berdoll's two books following the Darcy's are my favorite of this genre and the third book "Ruling Passion," is a wonderful follow-up to the follow-up of... well, you get the idea.

The things I love about Berdoll's writing and story-telling are - she gets the feel and the flow of the language right. You can imagine show more Miss Austen writing like this - if she had a late-20th/early 2st century American female's mindset. Because there's a whole lot of loving that goes on -- there are no discreet veils pulled over Darcy and Elizabeth's closed doors. If Miss Austen were a purveyor of trials and travails as we see trials and travails, then the situations that Berdoll puts Austen's characters, and her own supporting cast, in to would fold right into P&P. Part romance, part mystery, part Austen, part Dickens, part National Enquirer and all Berdoll.

The stories can't be put down, Ruling Passion is no exception. When the Nor'easter is blowing and you can sit yourself in a comfy chair, with a soft lap rug, a glass or mug of your favorite sipping beverage and a box of something indulgent to snack on - when you have no place to go for two days - that's the time to read one of Berdoll's sequels and delight in the full lives of the Darcys, their families, friends and Wickham. show less