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
For features, interviews, and best-of lists, please click on "Press" on the left-hand menu.
The Guardian
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
* Catherine Taylor
* The Guardian, Saturday 11 April 2009
That contemporary writers continue to turn to the wisdom of Jane Austen to solve modern relationship dilemmas comes as no surprise. Rigler gushingly transports LA Valley Girl Courtney Stone to the England of 1813 and the rebellious body of Jane Mansfield. Jane - at 30 over the hill even by Austen standards - is reluctantly on the marriage market under the gimlet gaze of her mother. The object of her confused affections is attractive, wealthy widower Charles Edgeworth - infinitely less grumpy than Mr Darcy, but with some serious philandering in his recent past. For loud-mouthed Courtney, herself recently bruised by unreliable fiancé Frank, it is preferable to adopt Jane's persona rather than reveal who she is and risk banishment to an asylum. An enjoyably silly romp, stuffed with Austen prototypes (if none of her astuteness), follows, highly diverting though flimsy as a muslin gown.