Sanditon

When I first read this completion of Jane Austen's fragment some years ago, I thought it was pretty good. This time through, I loved it.
It's possible that more exposure to Regency chick-lit and JA fan-fic has shown me just how rare it is for an author to creditably handle the language of that period, and the style of Austen. Because I was so much more impressed this time around. I don't think the "other lady" puts a foot wrong in her completion of the novel. It's fun, funny, and deftly worded.

Jane Austen's plot set-up is as follows: Charlotte Heywood and her family make friends with the Parkers, who invite her to come stay with them for a while at Sanditon, which is an up-and-coming seaside resort that Mr. Parker is heavily invested show more in. They arrive in town and Charlotte starts to meet the quirky people who live there or are visiting. There's Lady Denham (shades of Lady Catherine). There's her beautiful young relative Clara, who seems to have a secret. There's Sir Edward, a fool who imagines he's a villain. And there's Mr. Parker's siblings who are egregious hypochondriacs.
Jane Austen manages to introduce all of these people, but you know who she barely gets to introduce before coming to a screeching halt?

Sidney.
The hero.
He literally drives up in his carriage and doesn't really get to say anything just moments before Austen's part of the story ends. We know he's going to be Charlotte's guy because Austen has her characters mention him repeatedly before he arrives, and he sounds like a bit of a Henry Tilney. What could be better? Nothing!
In this completion, Sidney is every bit as interesting as he's set up to be. He's witty, he's surprising, he's intelligent, and he's a plotter... just enough to make Charlotte question how far she should trust him. I loved their interactions, and the mild amount of mystery surrounding his actions. I also loved how hard Charlotte genuinely tries to be sensible and balanced, even while Sidney is completely sweeping the rug out from under her feet. It's a satisfying read about falling in love. show less

Jane Austen began this novel not long before her death and she never had a chance to finish it. I had expected the written version to mimic Jane Austen’s refined prose; however, this proved not to be the case. It is a shame that Austen could not finish this book because the premise is unlike anything she had previously written.

The storyline involves a strong female character, Charlotte Heywood, who meets Mr. & Mrs. Parker due to a carriage accident that occurs near her home at Willingden, Sussex, where she lives with her parents and siblings. She is later invited to the visit and stay with the Parkers. Mr. Parker is an entrepreneur who is transforming a small fishing village into a seaside resort at Sanditon. Charlotte meets the show more second son of Mr. and Mrs. Parker, and it appears a relationship may develop between the two.

This is where the new material begins. It includes much more contemporary content than anything ever written by Jane Austen. It includes cursing, anachronisms, and much more sexual content than anything in Austen’s chaste romances. I did not care for the new material. I wish there had been some attempt to blend the two styles. Oh well. For me, the first half is great. The second is awful. show less

Another ‘continuation’ or ‘completion’ of a Jane Austen work in progress, though Marie Dobbs’ take on Sanditon, which Austen began six months before her death in 1817, falls short of the original chapters, in my opinion. No author can successfully imitate Austen’s style or humour, and granted, the finished six novels in her compact oeuvre are limited in plot and players, but Dobbs doesn’t develop one likeable or sympathetic character and the story, such as it is, merely follows the direction of Emma and Northanger Abbey.

The first eleven chapters penned by Austen introduce the cast and set the scene. A carriage overturns in a small town on the Sussex coast, and the gentleman travelling within seeks medical assistance for a show more threatened sprained ankle. He is Mr Parker of Sanditon, a seaside village, with his wife, Mrs Parker. They meet a kind farmer by the name of Mr Heywood, who takes the beleaguered travellers home to meet his family of a wife and fourteen children. In return, the Parkers offer to transport the whole Heywood family on with them to Sanditon, which Mr Parker likes to promote as a bathing place and modern health resort. Mr Heywood declines on his own part, but accepts for his eldest daughter, Charlotte, who becomes the Parkers’ house guest. When the three of them finally reach Sanditon, Charlotte finds not a populous location like Brighton or Eastbourne, but instead a small community by the sea, being slowly transformed into an up and coming holiday destination by Mr Parker and his co-sponsor, Lady Denham. There she meets Mr Parker’s brothers, Sidney and Arthur, and his two hypochondriac sisters, Susan and Diana. Lady Denham’s hateful relations are also on the scene, including the pompous and ridiculous Sir Edward and his sister Miss Denham, plus a distant cousin, Clara Brereton, who is on probation as Lady Denham’s companion. And a veritable influx of summer guests are promised to arrive at Sanditon any day, but there might be some confusion as to numbers.

And then, after presenting all of Sanditon’s inhabitants to the reader and hinting at a secret romance between two of the characters, Jane Austen died. Marie Dobbs picks up on mid-paragraph, but loses the irony and sharp wit of Austen’s writing in almost the same chapter. Instead of letting the characters make fools of themselves, Dobbs mocks them through the penetrating observations of her snotty heroine, Charlotte. Austen’s Sir Edward spends half a page expounding on romance novels, but Dobbs cuts to the chase, and condemns him for using ‘nonsensical words and inappropriate quotations’. Charlotte herself turns from a laughing Elizabeth Bennet into a prudish Fanny Price, and seems ill-matched with the only decent suitor of the set, Mr Parker’s brother Sidney, who is himself an unappealing combination of Frank Churchill and Henry Tilney. The rest of the characters are little more than caricatures, from the fussy Parker sisters to the Misses Steele – sorry, wrong novel – Beaufort, staying at the hotel. I don’t mind comic relief, if the characters are actually amusing, or at least pleasant, but I didn’t even like the heroine of this novel. The only pair I was actually happy for was Arthur Parker and Miss Lambe, who at least didn’t mess around and deserved their happiness.

The direction of the story is fairly predictable, and painfully slow to get to the point – which is fine when reading Austen, but not a pale imitation. There are pages of dialogue about toast and seaweed, all in the proper language but not really helpful to the plot and tedious to read. The romances are signalled from the beginning, and the lovers too flat and pathetic to care about. I think Dobbs was struggling with so many names and relationships, because nobody really makes the grade in the end. How I wish Austen could have finished her own novel, or at least written a few more notes before she died. show less

I wouldn't like to say that it was impossible for another author to complete Jane Austen's unfinished novel, Sandition, or to pen a sequel worthy of her masterpieces, but I have simply never seen it done. Sadly, this book did not prove me wrong...

I am not sure who "Another Lady" may be, but as admirable as I find her attempt, her prose is no match for the witty Jane, and I recall being instantly aware of the change in authorship, when passing from the eleventh to the twelfth chapter. How I wish that Austen had been able to complete this novel... but as she didn't, I must simply reconcile myself to the fact that there will be no more Jane Austen discoveries for me...

Unless, of course, I decide to read her letters... hmmm - now there's an show more idea! show less

*Please note: the author, who published this under the name of "Another Lady" also publishes under the names Anne Telscombe and Marie Dobbs. I'm not sure if either is her real name, but for the sake of brevity, I'm calling her "Dobbs" from here on out.

To properly explain to you why I love this novel, first I need to set the scene: the year was 2008, I wasn't blogging yet, and was in need of some structure; I was planning my summer reading and wishing for something like Jane Austen, when I realized that there were all these adaptations out there. At first, I was a bit startled. People would dare to "continue" and "adapt" Jane Austen? The horror. But then I thought, Maybe I could just embrace it? Maybe I could have a "Summer of Jane" and show more read all the adaptations I can get my hands on... (sound familiar?) Well, it didn't work out quite the way I'd planned, because the first few I picked up (the names long since forgotten) were dreadful. Awful, awful, awful stuff. In fact, I had just read another completion of Jane Austen's last unfinished work (ie this one) called "Charlotte" - about which I wrote my most scathing review EVER...only to have a Goodreads pageload error when I hit publish and I lost everything. Thwarted!

Anyway, I was about to give up and write off all Austen adaptations as puerile trash, but I had one more book in my stack of library books that was waiting to be read. I was really hesitant to read it, not only because it was another Austen adaptation, but because it was an adaptation of the very same work I'd just finished and loathed. Even if it turned out marginally better (I wasn't expecting much), I doubted I'd be able to separate it from the crap that filled the other book. But I decided to suck it up and give it a chance, and oh my sweet Jane, if it didn't completely change my mind about Austen adaptations. It was a revelation.

Now, I'm not saying this was perfect by any means. And I don't know how Jane Herself would have actually finished out the story (the fragment, if you didn't know, is 11 chapters long, so a good amount of the groundwork had been laid), but I have to say, Dobbs did a really admirable job of taking what she had to work with, parsing it out and figuring out where Austen may have intended the story to go, as well as where modern readers might want it to go, and then embracing that and going there. Aside from one particular sub-plot (that of the foolish wannabe-rake who takes things too far), I really didn't have any trouble believing that the story Dobbs presented was the one Jane intended. It has her characteristic wit, and skewers the foibles of a population in a very Jane-like way. The hero and heroine Dobbs presents feel very well-suited to each other and to Austen's world, like they may be close to what Austen intended of them, and most of the things they go through worked for me.

I was also very impressed with how seamlessly Dobbs blended her writing with Austen's. I was so invested in the story (both the first and second times I read it) that I was 3/4 of the way through before I ever had the thought to wonder where specifically Austen's fragment left off and Dobbs writing picked up. I had to google, and then flip back and forth and compare. Dobbs did a very admirable job of mimicking Austen's tone and style without feeling forced or hitting many false notes. She captured that sly sense of humor, the sharp eye towards the follies of others, the characterization, the structure - she really took her time to make the story and the style - Austen's style - shine, rather than letting her own style intrude. Rather, when it came time for her to take over the story, she injected her style gradually, so that - even though the plot does become more absurd and somewhat modern in its telling - the transition happens at such a good pace, and the style remains consistent enough, that the reader is never jarred out of the story by an abrupt shift in style or content.

Now, four years later, my "Summer of Jane" - which was to be a single, read-it-all and move on project - has evolved into a yearly tradition, and I've stumbled across many more good - and more than my share of bad - adaptations. To make sure my enjoyment of Sanditon wasn't a fluke due to the horrid nature of the other adaptations I'd read, I bought a copy and curled up with it for a second time. It wasn't a fluke; I fell just as in love with it as I did the first time around, and if it weren't for the fact that people would look at me like, Who? in Austen conversations, I'd talk just as readily of Charlotte and Sidney as I do of Elizabeth and Darcy, Catherine and Tilney, Wentworth and Anne... This was the first Austen adaptation I read that made me feel anything even close to what I felt the first time I read any of Austen's works, and it remains one of the few to have done so. show less

I have had this book a long time sitting on my shelves and have been very hesitant about reading it. I didn’t know how I felt about reading a book that was started by Jane Austen and then finished by someone else. Plus reading any uncompleted Jane Austen novel is very hard to handle. Eventually curiosity got the best of me and I picked up this book with basically no expectations that I would enjoy it. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with it. I think that had Jane Austen lived to finish this book it would have been another masterpiece, but since she did not have this chance, I have to say that Another Lady did a very good job at keeping with Jane Austen’s style. I don’t think a better imitation could have been show more accomplished. It is very hard to find the exact point that Jane Austen ends and Another Lady picks up. Another Lady does tell you in the last chapter where she began, and she does apologize for not being Jane Austen. It was a very smooth transition. I thought that Another Lady completed the story with probably the same intentions that Jane Austen may have had. The only small issue I have is that I wish the character development for Charlotte would have been done a little better, and I think her feelings for Sidney at times were very differently wrote than maybe how Austen would have done it but this still doesn’t make me think any less of it. I really enjoyed it and I will be keeping this book as part of my Jane Austen collection. show less

I recently read two incomplete novels by Jane Austen, The Watsons and Sanditon, loved both, and was left wanting more. I found the fragment of Sanditon left uncompleted by Jane Austen's death, even more intriguing; it had such possibilities! I really liked our heroine Charlotte Heywood, with her obvious intelligence, lack of pretension and good sense. In the eleven chapters of 26,000 or so words of Austen's text, Lady Denham and the three Parker hypochondriac siblings struck me as brilliant comic creations. Then there's Sir Edward Denham, who models himself after rakes like Richardson's Lovelace and schemes to seduce, and if not, abduct, Clara, his rival for Lady Denham's inheritance. Then there's Miss Lambe, "a young West Indian of show more large fortune," who is "about seventeen, half mulatto, and chilly and tender." What an interesting character to find in an Austen novel!

However, after my experience with Aiken's Watsons completion, I didn't expect much from the 1975 completion by "Another Lady" For what it's worth, I loved it. No, I'm not saying "Another Lady" (from the copyright apparently Marie Dobbs) is Austen's equal. But she tacked on her story seamlessly from where Austen ended, developed the characters very nicely and seemed to get the period details right. On its own terms, this is a winning historical romance, and I loved in particularly how she developed the hero, Sidney Parker, from the bare hints in what was left to us. I agree with the review below that he rivals Henry Tilney of Northanger Abbey in wit and charm. I've been unimpressed by most of the Jane Austen pastiches I've tried, this one left me with a smile. One point off to indicate no, this doesn't rank with those of Austen's novels completed by her, but the story is very enjoyable and earned a permanent place on my bookshelf. show less