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Press
USA Today
Austen's power: Jane addiction sweeps theaters, bookstores
By Carol Memmott and Claudia Puig, USA TODAY
..."She's almost eerily contemporary despite the bonnets, the balls and the carriages, because she's so keen and hilarious an observer of human nature," says author Laurie Viera Rigler. "To me, it's as if she's a modern-day psychotherapist who time-traveled back to the Regency period and writes a novel about everyone who spent time on her couch."
Full Article | Full Article at USA Today
Boston Herald
"Dances by candlelight, grand dinner parties and men with manners. Jane Austen’s depictions of courtship and life in Regency era England are romantic perfection. But was it really that ideal? In this quick, amusing 2007 novel - now available in paperback (Dutton publishers, $14) - Los Angeles singleton Courtney remedies heartbreak with a night of vodka and Austen novels. She awakens to find herself one of Austen’s contemporaries - with no indoor plumbing in sight."
Full Article | Full Article at Boston Herald
The Times of London
...there’s even the occasional hint of subversive humour. Laurie Viera Rigler’s Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict leads the field here.
Full Article | Full Article at The Times of London
Maclean's
The opposite of sex
Why we're obsessed with Jane Austen and Regency-era romance
LIANNE GEORGE
When she's not appearing on screen, Austen is busily inspiring reams of new fiction. One theme is increasingly ubiquitous: contemporary women who, dissatisfied and over-worked, become obsessed with the cozy world Austen paints. For instance, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler, due this fall, is the tale of a modern-day woman "nursing a broken engagement with Jane Austen novels and Absolut" who wakes up one morning to find she is inhabiting the body of an upper-class maiden in Regency England.
Full Article | Full Article at Maclean's
Indianapolis Star
There's something about Jane
by Lisa Waananen
After a night of heavy reading prompted by a breakup, Courtney Stone awakes in the Regency era as Jane Mansfield. She's soon swept up in the era's lavish social dance of young singles, committing a few comical etiquette blunders but eventually gaining perspective on what she really wants.
San Gabriel Valley Newspapers
Pasadena author explores girl's Austen odyssey
By MICHELLE J. MILLS, STAFF WRITER
It took Laurie Viera Rigler six years to write "Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict." There was a lot of research to do about the famed author to put into the story of a modern L.A. girl who one day is transported to Austen's early-19th-century world.
The problem for Rigler's heroine, Courtney Stone, is that she is in somebody else's body, where "the ultimate identity crisis ensues," said the author, who lives in Pasadena with her husband, Thomas Rigler, and their tortoise shell cat, Phoebe Georgiana. And the story won't be over for Courtney and Jane; Rigler is already at work on a sequel.
Full Article | Full Article at San Gabriel Valley Newspapers
Glendale News Press
"'Addicted' Jane Austen fans agreed, just like Rigler’s heroine “Courtney Stone,” Jane Austen was definitely their 'drug of choice.'"
Full Article | Full Article at Glendale News Press
Jane Austen Society of North America, Southwest
An Interview with the author
By ALICE MARIE WHITE, JASNA-SW Newsletter
(Jane Austen Society of North America, Southwest Region Newsletter, Spring/Summer 2007)
At the recent JASNA-SW Spring Meeting, members were treated to a sneak preview of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by author Laurie Viera Rigler. Laurie recently joined the JASNA-SW board as our Webmaster, but I first met her at a meeting of the Pasadena reading group. She is friendly, funny, and passionate about Jane Austen. Consequently, it was no surprise to me that JASNA-SW members were vastly entertained when Laurie shared a hilarious excerpt from her forthcoming novel.
Full Article | Full Article at Jane Austen Society of North America, Southwest
From the Blogosphere and Online Communities
The Austen Intelligencer (Winter 2007)
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict – Reading and Repast
by Joyce Melito
I look forward to reading what promises to be both a funny and touching novel.
Full Article | Full Article at The Austen Intelligencer (Winter 2007)
Conversations w/ Famous Writers
by Cindy Bokma
Imagine waking up one day and finding that you are not in the year 2007. You can't go to the bathroom because there is no toilet. You have a maid to help you empty your chamber pot, get you dressed and brush your hair. Perhaps you would like to visit the next town but you can't do it alone because that's not allowed even though you are thirty years old. A hot shower? Doesn't exist. You know what, I'd never last. I need my showeres and all the modern conveniences not to mention good face cream and mascara. I do love the romance of the era though. So perhaps I could spend a day in Jane Austen's England.
Full Article | Full Article at Conversations w/ Famous Writers
Dallas Book Diva
[Click on book title on the right-hand column of the Dallas Book Diva site, and then there will be a link to listen to an audiofile of the interview by Cheryl Nason]
Full Article at Dallas Book Diva
The Debutante Ball
The Best Beach Reads
by Lisa Daily
"Now, I’m generally not a fan of time travel books, or books set in Regency England, but I could not put this book down. I was so hooked after my three hours at the beach that I snuck in a page at the two stoplights on the way home. In the pick-up line at my daughter’s camp. And plied my children with cookies and DVDs so I could finish it that afternoon. I love, love, loved this book."
Full Article | Full Article at The Debutante Ball
Lava Life
Desperately Seeking Mr. Darcy
by Lisa Daily
How many of us immerse ourselves in a film or literary cocoon, overdosing on the perfect romantic heroes concocted in some writer's imagination when real men break our hearts? Answer: lots.
I was thinking about this while reading Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, a book that is impossible to put down.
Full Article | Full Article at Lava Life
Marginal Revolution
by Tyler Cowen
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
That's the title of Laurie Viera Rigler's new and fun book. The basic premise is that a pouty L.A. girl "wakes up" in the body of a character in a Jane Austen novel; here is the book's website. She also finds herself courted by an ardent suitor, Edgeworth, who wants an answer to his marriage proposal and soon. My wonderings were skewed as usual:
1. Would I, at first, have to act sick and crazy so as to cover up what are in fact more systematic lapses from accepted codes of social behavior?
2. If I am a rational Bayesian, what percentage of "transported people" should I expect to find in my new world? (It is indicative that our heroine thinks she is very special and isn't much concerned with this question.) Would such people be natural allies or enemies?
Full Article | Full Article at Marginal Revolution
MSN
"charming and funny"
Full Article | Full Article at MSN
Salon.com
“I Dream of Darcy” by Rebecca Traister
"Going back" is precisely the thing several of Sullivan's fellow Janeites seem to be aiming for rather more literally. There are currently three novels about 21st century women, single and bummed about it, who travel back to 19th century England to meet the perfect man (i.e., Fitzwilliam Darcy, in case anyone's still fuzzy on that).
In Laurie Viera Rigler's "Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict," heroine Courtney Stone falls asleep drunk in Los Angeles and wakes up in another woman's bedchamber and another woman's century. "Who are these people?" she wonders. "And what's with those outfits?"
Full Article | Full Article at Salon.com
University at Buffalo Alumni Association
Laurie Viera Rigler’s... first novel indulges an obsession—not for alcohol, gambling or men who don’t love enough, but for that most-proper chronicler of manners and mores, Jane Austen. The result, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, careens through the experiences of a 21st-century woman who wakes up one morning to find herself inexplicably living in 1813 England.
Full Article | Full Article at University at Buffalo Alumni Association