February Meeting
February 1st, 2012
For our meeting on Wed February 1st, we read Death Comes To Pemberley by P.D. James.
Jacket Synopsis:
The year is 1803, and Darcy and Elizabeth have been married for six years. There are now two handsome and healthy sons in the Pemberley nursery, Elizabeth’s beloved sister Jane and her husband Bingley, live within seventeen miles, the ordered and secure life of Pemberley seems unassailable, and Elizabeth’s happiness in her marriage is complete. But their peace is threatened and old sins and misunderstandings are rekindled on the eve of the annual autumn ball. The Darcys and their guests are preparing to retire for the night when a chaise appears, rocking down the path from Pemberley’s wild woodland, and as it pulls up, Lydia Wickham, an uninvited guest, tumbles out, screaming that her husband has been murdered.
In a pitch-perfect recreation of the world of Pride and Prejudice, P.D. James elegantly fuses her lifelong passion for the work of Jane Austen with her talent for writing detective fiction.
Our Rating: ★★★¼☆
Posted in Book Club
We gave Death Comes to Pemberley 3¼ stars out of 5. The book club felt that it was an easy, comfortable read – perfect for January. P.D. James rendered a very capable Jane Austen-like prose, but perhaps at the expense of the plot intensity that we would normally expect from her crime novels. One book club member felt it was “like revisiting old friends”, while another felt the characters of Elizabeth and Darcy “mellowed to the point of being unrecognisable”. Overall though it was a quietly satisfying and amusing read. P.D. James clearly enjoyed writing in the voice of Jane Austen, and poking fun at the forensics and judicial systems of the day. One book club member commented that it made her “dream a little of what life might have been like at that time.” But clearly we all felt she was dreaming of Darcy…