The Austen Intelligencer (Winter 2007)

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict - Review

Imagine waking up inside someone else’s body and living her life, a life in the England of Jane Austen’s time. This is what happens to Courtney Stone, a young woman from present-day Los Angeles, in the book Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, by Laurie Viera Rigler.

Courtney fortunately knows quite a bit about what it’s like to live in 1813 from reading her beloved Jane Austen. She adapts to her new persona as Miss Jane Mansfield (no, not that one!), learning to speak, act,and even do needlework as Jane would. She suffers at the hands of Jane’s cold, interfering mother, and tries to manage Jane’s flirtations with a handsome, rich, yet somewhat shady local widower, a young servant, and a charming seducer. There are those pesky little daily details, like the lack of indoor plumbing, that are an extra trial for Courtney/Jane, but certainly we in the 21st century have often wondered about those kinds of things that Jane Austen herself would never mention!

Ms. Rigler knows her Jane Austen and sprinkles the book with loving references. Her heroine actually encounters Jane Austen face to face in Bath, and loses her cool, ending up babbling about the movie adaptations! I can’t imagine what I would say to Jane Austen if I met her, but I hope it would not be about the casting of Edward Ferrars! Ms. Rigler, to her credit, has Jane Austen back away from her seemingly deranged admirer. Politely, of course.

This book is a fun, light, fluffy bit of “chick lit” for any Janeite - a good read for a plane trip or a rainy weekend.
--Mary Ann Linahan

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