My No.1 Book Group is in the habit of discussing a book way beyond its official ending, and they frequently invent scenarios for characters where the author has left off. I often find this quite perplexing but also deeply fascinating. And so, in ‘Death Comes to Pemberley’, it may depend whether you are like my No.1 Book Group and want to know more about Elizabeth and Darcy, and then of course, whether you like what P D James has done with the characters.
I have not read P D James before, but yes, I have read Jane Austen, although would not put myself in the category of an Austen devotee. I suspect that P D James may well be. It’s a tricky thing to emulate your favourite writer, and in some ways to cross genre. Does P D James succeed? I will leave this to you the reader, as I suspect there will be as many responses as there are readers. What did I think?
Well, it is a truth, universally acknowledged, that long sentences, unless they are well punctuated, witty and plot provoking, can at times, become tedious and a tad boring, unless of course you are Richard Ford in which case you are the front runner in the art of the interesting overly long sentence in the post modern era, but... in this instance, I think P D James avoids mostly boring and although there are horses and chaise (and chases), the pace is more of a gentle trot than a gallop, punctuated with sometimes witty plot provoking ruminations. P D James is having a lovely time with Austen’s characters as she investigates the relationship between the wicked Mr Wickham and the dashing Mr Darcy. Elizabeth is more in the shadows as the dutiful and highly conservative, respectable woman that perhaps she always was. What is it about Wickham? For some perverse reason, I find him in both Austen and P D James's versions of him, at times a more interesting character than the beloved Darcy.
The novel takes a bit of time to set the reader up and re-immerse them into Austen’s world with a prologue and the pace picks up when P D James takes over with her natural instincts as a crime writer. All the scene setting and re-acknowledgment of characters and situation at the start, felt unnecessary, as if the author did not trust her reader to know Austen as well as she did. But then a chaise arrived unexpectedly at Pemberley late one evening, the night before the annual ball, carrying a distraught Lydia and the story gathered momentum.
At times I was completely absorbed and imagined myself sitting wrapped in a shawl by a large open fire, the poker in my hand, “home cured bacon, sausages and kidneys on the sideboard beneath their silver domes” and I could have stayed there quite happily, enjoying a vicarious 1803. I enjoyed the witty observations of characters and the interesting legal and forensic history woven in. For example, early on, discussing the bloodied victim of murder a character says “I take it ... that your clever scientific colleagues have not yet found a way of distinguishing one man’s blood from another’s?” And later on, when the trial is in progress there is discussion about the idea of a Court of Appeal if the verdict goes the wrong way... “I can well imagine the reaction of an English jury to the proposal that their decision should be challenged by three judges.”
I was gripped by the plot but annoyed by the ending with so much unravelling in such a short time, so many back stories to be told. As a reader I like to be second-guessing and perhaps unravelling the plot myself – I suspect it would be difficult for a reader to have arrived at the complex sub-plot provided for Wickham (although rather good). P. D. James has thought a lot about Wickham which just goes to show how interesting villains are.
It’s a definite good summer read for an Austen fan and I presume too for a P D James fan who doesn’t know Austen and who might be led (is this what she intends) to reach out and go back to the start of the story, the romance that has led many young women to knowing more about Colin Firth on the big screen than they do about Jane Austen and the real (ha, imagined) Mr Darcy.
Epilogue:
I just have to say, hats off to P. D. James. I know age shouldn’t matter and the author should stand and fall on her work, but for goodness sake, this author is 91 years of age. How extraordinary, and how sharp and clever is she? It is impossible not to be impressed by this and indeed her body of work which I now plan to investigate over summer (well, one or two of her novels at least).
Published by Allen & Unwin
RRP $36.99
Footnote:
Maggie Rainey-Smith (left) is a Wellington novelist/poet/bookseller and regular guest reviewer on Beattie's Book Blog.
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