Searching for Pemberley

I'm not insane. I picked this book up on a whim - only because it happened to fall in my line of sight while at the library a few weeks back. I have been reading a bunch of history books of late (my fascination of history being an insatiable one), so I thought this may be fun enough. How utterly wrong I was.

Written by Mary Lydon Simonsen, Searching for Pemberly is set in the post Word War II period - mainly England - when the world is just coming to terms with the disaster of it. The protagonist, Maggie Joyce, leaves her home town of Minooka, a mining town in Pennsylvania, and travels to Germany and England on her job with the AARC. Almost as soon as she settles down in a small room in London, she embarks on a journey to see Jane Austen's world for herself. The world Jane Austen created in P&P, to be precise. The twist? That Jane Austen took a story, of the love between Will Lacey and Elizabeth Garrison, their families and friends, and made it into Pride and Prejudice. Far-fetched? I suppose. But I was curious to know how Simonsen would manage it.

When Maggie visits Montclair, she is told by the very friendly Beth and Jack Crowell that this is 'Permberly' not Chatsworth House as the world thinks it to be. And that the real Darcy and Elizabeth lived there! The story then weaves through a LOT of history, not just the people that we all know from P&P, but the war, and almost every back story of each and every character in this novel. Along the way, as Maggie searches for proof of this claim, she falls in love with an American pilot Rob, and with the Crowell's son Michael. Through the letters and diaries of Miss Austen's real life characters, and conversations with Beth and Jack, Maggie learns of the lives of people that lived 150 years ago, and how they were made famous by a smart English lady! She also makes the connection that the Crowells are descendants of the Laceys (or as the author points out in every page, the Darcys) a third of the way through the novel, and the other two-thirds are devoted to Maggie's relationship issues, details descriptions of new characters, the war, more history, P&P. It all finally ends back in Minooka, when Maggie discovers that she wants to leave home and that she is in love with Michael, something the reader is well will happen from almost their first meeting.

Now, I've never been one for romantic novels, so I must say that this was a good read in that arena. I'm also into history. But this novel, while accurately portraying the times and events around and following the end of the second World War, drags you through a whole load of unwanted details. There's too much in it! There's Rob, the American pilot and Maggie's man through most of the book. His description of almost each and every day of his life as a pilot gets painfully boring. Then there's Jack and Beth - their story, though necessary to some extent, went into too much narration by both characters. And each of their relations that play a role in P&P as well. Oh! How could I not mention the in-depth story of the actual relationships between each of the people that inspired Jane Austen! It's just way too much information for a simple and, what might have been, an enjoyable read!

I've read long books, with a lot of detail in them - I slogged through Gone With the Wind at a very young age, for the love of books! But this one did wear me out in a different way. It's very well written, and I appreciate, truly, the effort that Simonsen has put into researching England in the mid-1940s and in the 19th century, though most of that seems to be based off P&P itself. I also appreciate the importance she has placed on letter-writing between Austen's real life models (Austen, as we know, was an avid letter writer, and used that as a means of communication between her characters in her novels). I also appreciate the Darcy/Lacey mix, and the explanation that goes into the families and their behaviors. But it gets tedious after a couple hundred pages.

While I do believe that with a bit more editing this novel could have been made more exciting, and even fast paced, I wouldn't recommend this book quite so fervently as I would other historical romances or P&P companions. One question I repeatedly asked myself was, "Why did the Crowells take Maggie, a perpetual stranger from another land, in and disclose their family's history and intimate secrets to her so readily?"

It's good. You can put the book down anytime you want and start again from where you left off without feeling that you've forgotten the story. It's slow paced enough for an elongated reading. But if it is a historical romance or a good P&P spin-off that you are looking for, then I would recommend you start elsewhere and come to this at a later point in time.