DANCING WITH MR. DARCY

Author: Sarah Waters ISBN: 9780061999062 10/2010 ANTHOLOGY Publisher: HARPER TRADE

An anthology of the winning entries for the Jane Austen Short Story Award Two hundred years ago, Jane Austen— traumatized by her parents’ decision to give up the rectory in Hampshire where she grew up, and unable to write for a decade—accepted her brother Edward’s offer of a permanent home in his Chawton House estate. It was there that she picked up her pen once again . . . and gave the world some of the most beloved and enduring novels ever written. The Jane Austen Short Story Competition celebrates the immortal author and her works, and the blessed home that afforded her the peace and security to create them. Judged and chosen by Sarah Waters, bestselling author of Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith, Dancing with Mr. Darcy includes the winning selection and nineteen runners-up, as well as introductions from Waters and Rebecca Smith, the great-great-great-great-great niece of Jane Austen.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

First and foremost, you have to be a big Jane Austen fan to want to read a book like DANCING WITH MR. DARCY. This is a compilation of some twenty short stories that were submitted to the Chawton House Library for a literary contest. As the title suggests, all of the short stories were to be inspired by Jane Austen. Not knowing what to expect from this read, I must admit that I was pleasantly surprised by the talent of most of the stories that I’ve read.

Since they are short stories, I finished reading this book in one evening. Every story maintained a fast pace and most of them were full of quick-witted dialogue. I enjoyed most of them and found them interesting, imaginative, and unique.

The winner of the competition, Jane Austen Over the Styx, opened this book, and out of all the stories in here, I just didn’t connect well with it.  In that story, we have a dead Jane Austen, accused by some of the characters she wrote about of portraying them as manipulative harpies. This is the only story that I found a bit on the slow side and not as interesting as the rest of them.

Personally, I loved One Character in Search of Her Love Story Role by Felicity Cowie. This was a contemporary story in which our heroine is given an assignment to ‘shadow’ Jane Bennet and Jane Eyre. The dialogue was very good and the characters three-dimensional, but the footnotes made by our heroine were laughing-out-loud funny!

Please, if you get to read this book, make sure to check out biographies of these very talented people. They come from England, Scotland, North and South Wales, Canada, and United States. Their backgrounds are as different as the stories they penned, and I found it fascinating. I was truly humbled by this group, which included an actress, a journalist, a farmer, a teacher, and a theater director.

If I were Jane Austen, I would have had a ball reading these stories! I highly recommend it, and promise you, you’ll love it!

Melanie Friedman