Longbourn by Jo Baker
“Things could change so entirely, in a heartbeat; the world could be made entirely anew, because someone was kind.”
Enjoyed this novel! It was written nicely with the events occurring in Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,”. It’s the version of the story, told by the perspective of the servants at Longbourn.
The main characters are Sarah, an orphan taken into service as a small child, now about the age of Jane and Elizabeth, and James, a mysterious man suddenly taken on as a footman who does, I believe, appear in Austen’s novel. After many misunderstandings, they fall in love, but Wickham, a villain in whichever novel he lands, pulls them apart.
In this well-researched book, Baker artfully portrays life during Regency Era England in a very colorful and lyrical, yet sobering, manner. The writing is wonderful here, and this book contains such amazing, plot-twisty revelations concerning some characters’ backgrounds that it makes one almost unable to put the book down.
What Jane Austen did for life in the Regency era, by poking fun and questioning the mores of society, Jo Baker does the same for the serving class. While the characters felt different from Austin’s beloved novel, Baker is writing from a realistic and entertaining point of view.
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