Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
Laurie Viera Rigler, 2007
Penguin Group USA
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780452289727
Summary
After nursing a broken engagement with Jane Austen novels and Absolut, Courtney Stone wakes up and finds herself not in her Los Angeles bedroom or even in her own body but inside the bedchamber of a woman in Regency England. Who but an Austen addict like herself could concoct such a fantasy?
Not only is Courtney stuck in another woman’s life, she is forced to pretend she actually is that woman; and despite knowing nothing about her, she manages to fool even the most astute observer. But not even her love of Jane Austen has prepared Courtney for the chamber pots and filthy coaching inns of nineteenth-century England, let alone the realities of being a single woman who must fend off suffocating chaperones, condomless seducers, and marriages of convenience. Enter the enigmatic Mr. Edgeworth, who fills Courtney’s borrowed brain with confusing memories that are clearly not her own.
Try as she might to control her mind and find a way home, Courtney cannot deny that she is becoming this other woman—and being this other woman is not without its advantages: especially in a looking-glass Austen world. And especially with a suitor who may not turn out to be a familiar species of philanderer after all. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1957
• Where—N/A
• Education—State University of New York at Buffalo, USA
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
When not indulging herself in re-readings of Jane Austen’s six novels, Laurie Viera Rigler is a freelance book editor who teaches writing workshops, including classes in storytelling technique at Vroman’s, Southern California's oldest and largest independent bookstore.
After many years of keeping her Austen addiction largely to herself, Laurie decided to come out of the Janeite closet when the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) decided to hold their annual general meeting in Los Angeles. Who knew there were other obsessed souls out there, a whole community of them, as a matter of fact? Now she has people she can talk to about what’s most important in life, Jane Austen, Jane Austen, and Jane Austen. When she’s not talking about Austen, reading about Austen, or writing books inspired by Austen, she’s tinkering with the website of JASNA’s Southwest Region, where she serves as webmaster.
Prior to writing Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Laurie teamed with Richard Roeper of Ebert & Roeper to write a humorous, gender-specific guide to movie rentals entitled He Rents, She Rents: The Ultimate Film Guide to the Best Women’s Films and Guy Movies. She also coauthored Popping the Question: Real-Life Stories of Marriage Proposals, From the Romantic to the Bizarre with Sheree Bykofsky.
Before she began writing and editing books, Laurie spent several years on and around film sets in various capacities, from production coordinating features to producing short films; and from reading screenplays to rewriting and cowriting scripts. Then one day, she saw in her mind a twenty-first-century L.A. Janeite waking up in the body and life of a woman in Austen’s time. She knew this one had to be a book, and she started writing Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. She still loves film, but finds watching it much more fun than making it. Especially if it stars Colin Firth or Matthew MacFadyen.
“All this she must possess,” added Darcy, “and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.” Oh, yeah. Education. Laurie graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from the State University of New York at Buffalo with a B.A. in Classics. That good enough for you, Mr. Darcy? (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
A devotee of all things Austen… discovers the reality of life in Regency England: rampant body odor, sexual and class repression and a style of medical care involving bloodletting.... Despite the smells, little in [her] current lifestyle—including most of the men—can compete with the erotic charge of dancing in a candlelit ballroom.
USA Today
A delightful comic romp… Jane Austen makes a cameo appearance that is pure pleasure.
Times Picayune
(Audio version.) Orlagh Cassidy is delightfully fun as Courtney Stone, a modern Los Angeles girl nursing a heartbreak who wakes up to find herself inhabiting the body and life of a Jane Austenesque Regency girl. Cassidy is spot-on with Courtney's California accent, modern-day moaning about men, self-analysis and doubt, and sarcasm—and then, without missing a beat, flips easily into the proper, upper-class English tones of Jane (the Regency girl Courtney has replaced, whose accent came with the body), her pompous, controlling mother, her desperate suitor and her sympathetic best friend. Orlagh's lively narration makes Courtney even more endearing and brings the colorful story to life. Fans of Austen, chick lit, and romantic comedies should definitely put this one on their listening list.
Publishers Weekly
Waking up in early 19th-century Britain is not a common occurrence for a 21st-century gal from L.A. Yet Courtney Stone, just having dumped her womanizing fiancé, does wake up during the Regency era in the home and body of Jane Mansfield (yes, she acknowledges the irony), a woman of 30 who has just fallen from a horse. As Courtney realizes that she is not dreaming, she becomes attuned to the thoughts, feelings, and memories of her host. First novelist Rigler has taken her own love of author Austen and superimposed it onto Courtney, a repeat reader and viewer of all things Jane. Aside from the obvious, there are other complications afoot, including a possible dalliance with a footman and the confused emotions regarding Charles Edgeworth, a prospective suitor and the brother of Jane's dearest friend, Mary. Throw in Jane's stern mother, her back-stabbing cousin, and a fortune-teller, and it's one wild time-traveling ride. Or is it? At book's end, it isn't quite clear where (or who) Courtney/Jane is. The voice of our heroine isn't well established either. She quotes from her favorite author's novels at will, but her tone and behavior are more that of a recalcitrant Valley Girl. What began as a charming premise becomes downright irritating. Perhaps exhaustive Austen collections would be interested.
Library Journal
Talk about an out-of-body experience. One moment Courtney Stone is a modern-day L.A. career woman lamenting a lost love; the next she is Jane Mansfield, a well-to-do, willowy (though not particularly buxom, unlike her twentieth-century namesake) lady in nineteenth-century England....This frothy take on literary time travel will appeal most to readers well versed in the celebrated author's memorable characters and themes.—Allison Block.
Booklist
An Austen addict who's been having romantic trouble in contemporary Los Angeles finds herself transported to early-19th-century England living a life that seems lifted from a compilation of the Austen novels. One morning shortly after Courtney has broken with her fiance Frank-he's been carrying on with the wedding-cake decorator-she mysteriously wakes up inside the body of Miss Jane Mansfield in 1813. Thirty-year-old Jane is recovering from an equine accident and resisting her unpleasant mother's attempts to push her into marriage. At first Courtney thinks her time travel is a dream, but when she begins talking defiantly, Mrs. Mansfield threatens to put Jane into an asylum. Courtney/Jane slides into the life of an Austen heroine, resisting the charms of handsome Mr. Edgeworth, who reminds her too much of not only Frank but his best friend Wes, to whom Courtney has been feeling drawn despite herself. She confides her confusing identity to Edgeworth's sister Mary, Jane's true friend who has dissuaded her from marrying Edgeworth because she thinks he fathered a housemaid's illegitimate child. Mary also resents that he broke off her romance with a man he found unsuitable. Mary and Jane/Courtney travel the Austen map, first to Bath, then to London, along the way encountering men and women who will be familiar to the most casual Austen reader. First-time novelist Rigler jumbles names and pieces of plot line from the novels into an Austenian dream (or nightmare). Mary and Jane/Courtney learn that Mary's former beloved was a cad and that Edgeworth acted nobly with the maid, not sexually. How Courtney entered Jane's body, through the ministrations of a magical fortuneteller, is almost an afterthought. Jane/Courtney's 21st-century urges offer provocative possibilities, but Courtney's world is a pale sketch, and Jane's so laden with Austen references that it has no life. Even the most diehard Austen fans may find this work to be too much.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Would you have handled things differently if you found yourself in Courtney’s/Jane’s situation? Which things would you have done differently? Which things would you have done the same?
Had you witnessed my behaviour there, I can hardly suppose you would ever have thought well of me again.— Frank Churchill, in Jane Austen’s Emma
2. How does Courtney/Jane use Jane Austen’s novels as a means of making sense of her world? Have you ever turned to your favorite books or films for inner strength, guidance, or comfort?
Oh! it is only a novel!” replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. It is . . . in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.— Henry Tilney, in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey
3. How do you interpret the ending of the book?
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.— From Mansfield Park
4. Aside from the societal restrictions on a woman’s mobility, career choices, and living arrangements that Courtney/Jane faced in 1813, have parental, peer, and personal attitudes toward unmarried women fundamentally changed since Jane Austen’s day?
Ah! Jane, I take your place now, and you must go lower, because I am a married woman.— Lydia Bennet, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
5. One of the ways in which Courtney/Jane defines herself is by what she reads. To what extent do we define ourselves by what we read? To what extent do we form our opinions of others based on what they read?
The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. — Henry Tilney, in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey
6. Like Courtney/Jane, have you ever found yourself in a situation where your very concept of who you are was fundamentally challenged?
Till this moment, I never knew myself.— Elizabeth Bennet, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
7. What are the things you think you would enjoy the most about being in Jane Austen’s world? What are the things you might find particularly challenging? Is there anything in the contemporary world that you absolutely could not do without?
One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.— Emma Woodhouse, in Jane Austen’s Emma
8. If it were possible for you to be someone in Jane Austen’s world, who would you wish to be? Would you prefer a round-trip ticket to that world, or one-way only?
The distance is nothing, when one has a motive...— Elizabeth Bennet, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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