Books 2015 - The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet by Coleen McCullough
Twenty Years after Pride and Prejudice closes, the Bennet sisters have another remarkable story to tell.
Mary Bennet, of the atrocious voice and staid bent of mind, has been weighted down with family oblications. Her sisters have made lives of their own: Jane is happily married, Elizabeth finds being a Darcy brings unwelcome social pre-eminence, Lydia's still entranced by soldiers, and Kitty's a star of London's fashionable salons. But Mary has had to wait for her moment to claim her liberty.
Once she is free, Mary resolves to publish a book about the plight of England's poor. Plunging from one predicament to another, she embarks upon a mission of investigation that eventually leads her into mortal danger. But having once tasted independence, Mary resolves to keep it - and she will let nobody, whether family, suitor or enemy, take it away.
It didn't really occur to me when I picked it up that I might not get on at least reasonably well with this book, because it was by an author I'd enjoyed in the past (granted, quite a long time in the past *g*), and it must, I thought, be fairly solid in order to be published as a sequel to Pride and Prejudice. But sadly I didn't come out of it feeling that way! I did finish it, but that was partly sheer stubbornness - although in a way I did want to find out what happened in the end, I wasn't really enjoying the finding out. I think it was because I couldn't really get a grip on the characters - nothing to do with their past existence, which to be honest I didn't remember much of, but within this single book they just didn't seem consistent somehow - or even believable.
Most of them started as one thing, and ended as complete paragons about to live the remains of their days perfectly. Darcy began as an absolute villain, but somehow ended a hero - which would be fine, except that I didn't see any real moment that would have changed him, not in a way believable with his initial characterisation. The sisters all began as powerless and incompetent, and by the end were fully in charge of building an orphanage, having been the only people able to deal with 30 savage children. The men in their lives suddenly decided that they would accede to the women's rights as people - with no apparent reason for this change of heart. And worst of all, after all her trials and adventures, and the build-up of everyone looking for her, Mary was rescued by a freak earthquake... and then everyone found hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of gold bars that were miraculously free of ownership. And Elizabeth and Darcy fell in love with each other again. And everyone waltzed off into the sunset with the person they were meant to be with, utterly reformed characters. I almost think that McCullough perhaps got bored writing it halfway through, and decided she had to wrap everything up and just wanted to get it done - the trouble being that it just didn't ring true then, because she wasn't committed to the characters any more.
And it really did remind me of Prosfic by Jane, in the way that McCullough taught us things as readers. You can't stop a story with an aside about how many shillings are in a pound! Or have the characters give long expository speeches about their pasts to people who already know them! It all made me wonder how influenced Jane might have been by McCullough - or alternatively, perhaps they were both influenced by some style in Australia at the time that involved lecturing to your readers - the World According to Author - and teaching them things... which is fine, but not when done so consciously that it breaks the reader away from the story they're supposed to be living in...
And maybe I'm completely wrong, and it's just supposed to be read in the spirit of a Reforming Victorian Novel where everyone learns their lesson etc. by the end and the grace of god, but it's not what I want from a modern novel, which is what this is, so... So I shall go back and re-read some older McCullough one of these days, and see what I think of that now too.