Jane Bites Back
Considering my often-repeated disdain for RPF, writers hitching their career to more famous writers, and especially the horror/Austen mashups, it's a bit embarrassing to admit how much I enjoyed Michael Thomas Ford's Jane Bites Back.
It's crackfic, plain and simple.
Like any good parody it's internally consistent, while being based on a series of ever more ludicrous assumptions: That Jane lost her virginity and life to a secret lover. That she's been garnering rejections for her final book for 250 years. And that she's had writer's block ever since. (The part where she's furious about other people making a living repackaging or bastardizing her work - that part I can easily believe.)
Periodically moving to hide her agelessness, she is currently living in a small town in New York under the name of Jane Fairfax, running a bookstore with the help of a young woman who reminds her of her sister, and avoiding the attentions of a perfectly nice but slightly boring and all-too mortal man.
But then her placid life is shaken in several directions. Professionally, her book is finally accepted and shortlisted for early publication, throwing Jane into a whirl of publicity and jealousy that she never knew when it was her brother submitting the manuscripts on her behalf. Romantically, she is torn between her friend Walter, her stunning editor Kelly, and the return of the man who made her who she is today, a man calling himself Brian George. (For anyone who looked at that name and said "Oh no, it can't be - !" ... Oh yes, it can.)
The novel is set up for a sequel, which will probably be a mistake - this conceit won't bear much weight, much less internal development. But for now, lit lovers are going to equally laugh out loud and roll their eyes over the wreckage heaped on more than one early 19th century British author.
It's crackfic, plain and simple.
Like any good parody it's internally consistent, while being based on a series of ever more ludicrous assumptions: That Jane lost her virginity and life to a secret lover. That she's been garnering rejections for her final book for 250 years. And that she's had writer's block ever since. (The part where she's furious about other people making a living repackaging or bastardizing her work - that part I can easily believe.)
Periodically moving to hide her agelessness, she is currently living in a small town in New York under the name of Jane Fairfax, running a bookstore with the help of a young woman who reminds her of her sister, and avoiding the attentions of a perfectly nice but slightly boring and all-too mortal man.
But then her placid life is shaken in several directions. Professionally, her book is finally accepted and shortlisted for early publication, throwing Jane into a whirl of publicity and jealousy that she never knew when it was her brother submitting the manuscripts on her behalf. Romantically, she is torn between her friend Walter, her stunning editor Kelly, and the return of the man who made her who she is today, a man calling himself Brian George. (For anyone who looked at that name and said "Oh no, it can't be - !" ... Oh yes, it can.)
The novel is set up for a sequel, which will probably be a mistake - this conceit won't bear much weight, much less internal development. But for now, lit lovers are going to equally laugh out loud and roll their eyes over the wreckage heaped on more than one early 19th century British author.