Sign Up
If you would like to receive occasional updates about readings, talks, writing workshops, and other Jane Austen Addict news, please enter your email address here:
Reviews
Selected reviews of the novels RUDE AWAKENINGS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT and CONFESSIONS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT, and the web series inspired by the novels, SEX AND THE AUSTEN GIRL. (For more reviews, click on the title of the book on the menu bar above):
The Observer (Confessions review)
* Francesca Segal
* The Observer, Sunday 19 April 2009
Colin Firth striding about the grounds of Pemberley in his wet shirt has a lot to answer for. That particular BBC adaptation marked the dawn of an era in which Austen-mania began to take a slightly painful literary form. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, though, is great fun. Courtney is a modern Los Angeles girl - smoking, drinking and generally self-medicating with takeaways and Austen novels since she broke up with her cheating fiance.
Then one day, she wakes up in the body of a girl called Jane Mansfield in 19th-century England and must navigate her new life, wondering all the while what to do with the unfinished business back in 21st-century LA. Rigler has done a lovely job, balancing the Regency fantasy with enough modern sass to avoid things cloying and also, crucially, making Courtney easy to relate to. Will it win the Booker? Absolutely not, but I'm not ashamed to say that I spent a blissful day with it.