Kirkus-Style Review: Longbourn by Jo Baker

Longbourn: A Novel


By Jo Baker
Knopf Doubleday Publishing
October, 2013
978-0385351232

What was happening downstairs in the servants’ quarters while the Bennets, the Bingleys, and the exasperatingly romantic Mr. D’Arcy were immersed in the events of Pride and Prejudice?  Oh, it seemed like such a good idea for a book.

Jo Baker (The Undertow, 2012) paints a grim and darkly-detailed portrait of the lives of household servants at Longbourn, the family residence of the Bennets.  Housemaid Sarah suffers from chilblains while she toils at cleaning, laying fires, laundering, and mending in a household of five daughters.  We see Lizzie, Jane, and the other Bennet sisters through Sarah’s eyes, and the view is rather depressing. (“Perhaps that was why they spoke instructions at her from behind an embroidery hoop or over the top of a book; she had scrubbed away their sweat, their stains, their monthly blood; she knew they weren’t as rarefied as angels, and so they just couldn’t look her in the eye.”)  When a new manservant, James, is hired to assist the household, his controversial presence is a fascination to the unworldly Sarah.  James, however, bears the scars of a wanderer’s life and too much of the second half of the book is spent on the more gruesome details of his painful history.  While the servants are only scantly aware of Jane Austen’s plotline taking place upstairs, readers may be surprised at the downstairs view of familiar characters such as Mr. Collins, Lydia Bennet, and George Wickham. And Mrs. Hill, the tough-minded cook, holds a jarring secret that connects the two worlds.  The downcast tone of Baker’s narrative voice creates a hopeless atmosphere which may be appropriate for the dismal lives of the servants that people her pages.  However, it is a discordant shift from the wit and keenly-observed attitude of its source novel, and that dissonance is hard to ignore.  Readers unfamiliar with Pride and Prejudice may be unaware of the contrast, but will be weighed down by the uninviting grimness of life at Longbourn.

Read-alikes, sequels, and even zombie-themed tributes to Jane Austen have a good track-record, so expect strong initial sales.  Additionally, fans of “Downton Abbey” may relish the idea of seeing the Bennets from a below-stairs angle.  Longbourn, however, is a better concept than it is a novel.

[Disclaimer to my classmates:  Although I'm an admirer of Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice is not on my list of favorite novels.  So I'm not automatically primed to dislike any detour from the original novel.  This just didn't work for me, so I thought I'd try my hand at a Kirkus-style slam.  I am, however, in the minority here.  Longbourn received rave reviews almost across the board.  Somewhat ironically, the real Kirkus review calls the novel "irresistible."]