Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict - Hardcover

Rigler, Laurie Viera

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525950400 ISBN 13: 9780525950400

Publisher: Dutton, 2007

Synopsis

Read Laurie Viera Rigler's posts on the Penguin Blog.

After nursing a broken engagement with Jane Austen novels and Absolut, Courtney Stone wakes up and finds herself not in her Los Angeles bedroom or even in her own body, but inside the bedchamber of a woman in Regency England. Who but an Austen addict like herself could concoct such a fantasy? Not only is Courtney stuck in another woman’s life, she is forced to pretend she actually is that woman; and despite knowing nothing about her, she manages to fool even the most astute observer. But not even her level of Austen mania has prepared Courtney for the chamber pots and filthy coaching inns of nineteenth-century England, let alone the realities of being a single woman who must fend off suffocating chaperones, condom-less seducers, and marriages of convenience. This looking-glass Austen world is not without its charms, however. There are journeys to Bath and London, balls in the Assembly Rooms, and the enigmatic Mr. Edgeworth, who may not be a familiar species of philanderer after all. But when Courtney’s borrowed brain serves up memories that are not her own, the ultimate identity crisis ensues. Will she ever get her real life back, and does she even want to?

About this title

About the Author

LAURIE VIERA RIGLER's first novel, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict,was a national bestseller. A Life Member of the Jane Austen Society ofNorth America, Laurie teaches writing workshops, including classes atVroman's, Southern California's oldest and largest independentbookstore.

Reviews

Aclever time-travel setup functions as the prime attraction for this breezy debut novel. Courtney Stone, a single Los Angeles woman recovering from the double whammy of a broken engagement and a failed friendship, wakes up after a night of self-medicating with her drug of choice, Jane Austen novels, to find herself in 1813 England. She's inhabiting the body of Jane Mansfield, a manor-born Englishwoman who, at 30, has yet to find a husband, confounding her humorless, Miss Bossy-corset stand-in mother. While still haunted by real-life memories, Courtney, as Jane, soon gets swept up in this Austenesque world of decadent meals and grand balls, gentlemen in form-fitting knee breeches and traveling with her friend Mary, whose brother, Charles Edgeworth, appears to have an interest in Jane that Courtney struggles to understand. As her identity starts to meld with Jane's, Courtney rethinks who she wants to be (and to be with) in any time period. While her 21st-century anachronisms can be comical, Courtney, for such an Austen addict, is unconvincingly naïve about Regency norms. Fans of the ever-expanding inspired-by-Austen-lit garden party will find a winner here; it doesn't hurt that Austen has a brief, comical cameo. (Aug.)
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Talk about an out-of-body experience. One moment Courtney Stone is a modern-day L.A. career woman lamenting a lost love; the next she is Jane Mansfield, a well-to-do, willowy (though not particularly buxom, unlike her twentieth-century namesake) lady in nineteenth-century England. What could account for this transplant of time and place? Courtney has no opportunity to ruminate over such matters; she must quickly learn to interact with inhabitants of the brave old world in which she finds herself. There's her mother, determined to marry 30-year-old Jane off to handsome Mr. Edgeworth; her artist father, more inclined to his daughter's free-spirited frame of mind; and faithful servant Miss Barnes, who helps her mistress manage everything from chaperones to corsets. (Thank goodness Jane has read Pride and Prejudice more than a dozen times.) It's not long before Jane finds the lines blurred between her two vastly different selves. Like her heroine, debut author Rigler boasts an obsession with the novels of Jane Austen. This frothy take on literary time travel will appeal most to readers well versed in the celebrated author's memorable characters and themes. Block, Allison

Edition details

• Publisher: Dutton
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0525950400
• ISBN 13: 9780525950400
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304