According to Jane by Marilyn Brant
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(Paperback)
- Pub. Date: October 2009
- 352pp
- Sales Rank: 46,090
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: October 2009
- Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
- Format: Paperback, 352pp
- Sales Rank: 46,090
- ISBN-13: 9780758234612
- ISBN: 0758234619
Synopsis
In Marilyn Brant's smart, wildly inventive debut, one woman in search of herself receives advice from the ultimate expert in matters of the heart…
It begins one day in sophomore English class, just as Ellie Barnett's teacher is assigning Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. From nowhere comes a quiet "tsk" of displeasure. The target: Sam Blaine, the cute bad boy who's teasing Ellie mercilessly, just as he has since kindergarten. Entirely unbidden, as Jane might say, the author's ghost has taken up residence in Ellie's mind, and seems determined to stay there.
Jane's wise and witty advice guides Ellie through the hell of adolescence and beyond, serving as the voice she trusts, usually far more than her own. Years and boyfriends come and go—sometimes a little too quickly, sometimes not nearly fast enough. But Jane's counsel is constant, and on the subject of Sam, quite insistent. Stay away, Jane demands. He is your Mr. Wickham.
Still, everyone has something to learn about love—perhaps even Jane herself. And lately, the voice in Ellie's head is being drowned out by another, urging her to look beyond everything she thought she knew and seek out her very own, very unexpected, happy ending…
"An engaging read for all who have been through the long, dark, dating wars, and still believe there's sunshine, and a Mr. Darcy, at the end of the tunnel." —Cathy Lamb, author of Henry's Sisters
"This is a must-read for Austen lovers as well as for all who believe in the possibility of a happily-ever-after ending." —Holly Chamberlin, author of One Week In December
Marilyn Brant has been a classroom teacher, a library staff member, afreelance writer and a national book reviewer. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and son, surrounded by towers of books that often threaten to topple over and crush her. A proud member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, Marilyn's debut novel featuring "Jane" won the Romance Writers of America's prestigious Golden Heart® Award. When not working on her next book, she enjoys traveling, listening to music and finding new desserts to taste test.
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Wonderful read!by Maria_Geraci
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October 12, 2009: "According to Jane" is the story of 15 year-old Ellie who begins hearing the voice of Jane Austen when her sophomore English class starts reading "Pride and Prejudice". Jane becomes Ellie's secret companion over the next 20 years as the novel spans Ellie's life from high school to the age of thirty-four. Ellie is searching for true love (something that seemed to evade the real Jane Austen) but that doesn't stop Jane from giving Ellie advice on the men Ellie dates. Labeling men as "Wickhams" and "Darcys" and "Bingleys", "Jane" is ever ready with the same sharp wit she used in her own novels. Warm, smart, and fast paced, I absolutely loved this book and am now left eagerly awaiting Marilyn Brant's next novel.
What modern young lady would not want to be advised by Jane Austen?by Laurel_Ann
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September 28, 2009: Here's a new novel that tugged at my heart strings and validated my belief that if the world was run according to Jane Austen, we would be much smarter and happier. Enuff said!
Fifteen-year old Ellie Barnett is a bookish geek. She excels at academics, but according to her caustic older sister, she is digging herself into a hole of permanent unpopularity with her scraggly hair, lack of make-up, and inattention to fashion. There is however, one boy who since kindergarten has paid her a bit more attention than she is comfortable with. Sam Blaine may be good-looking, athletic, brainy, and popular - but he is trouble - and just happens to sit behind her in English class taunting her with pokes in the back with his pencil and sexual innuendo. When she cracks open her next reading assignment, a copy of Pride and Prejudice, she begins to hear voices. Jane Austen's British voice to be exact, interjecting observations and advice, specifically warning Ellie to beware of Sam Blaine. He is her Wickham, that charming scoundrel that wooed Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and then eloped with her younger sister Lydia. Ellie does not doubt the advice, just the whole hearing voices thing really freaks her out her out. Jane Austen's spirit has somehow inhabited her mind, commenting in her acerbic early ninteenth-century sensibility on Ellie's 1980's life and romances and she does not know why. Over the course of twenty years, we follow Ellie through her life challenges as a single women looking for love and happiness in what Jane Austen deems to be a morally confusing world. Who of us could ever forget their own first love, the painful realization that you are being used, or the first time you were dumped? As Jane offers Ellie witty and wise advice on family conflicts, career choices, and a barrage of bad boyfriends that come and go, Ellie slowly realizes that she must learn some life lesson before she can move on. For Ellie, one painful lesson was bad-boy Sam who Jane advises to stay clear of yet she is still drawn too. As their lives keep crossing paths over the course of the years, they never seem to be at the right place at the right time to work it out. Ellie trusts and values Jane's opinion. Who better to advise her than an author who is valued for her keen judgment of human nature and romantic insights? But with Sam, she holds strong prejudices. Could she be wrong? Is he really her Wickham, or could he be her Mr. Darcy? What an unexpected, uplifting, and urbane debut novel! To paraphrase Jane Austen's character Lady Catherine, Marilyn Brant has given us a treasure. Granted that there are hundreds of Jane Austen inspired novels written over the years, this totally unique and original concept of Austen's ghost inhabiting and advising a modern young woman is brilliant. The play of early nineteenth-century social mores against twentieth-century culture is so droll that I laughed-out-loud several times in total recognition. Like Austen, Brant excels at characterization offering a heroine in Ellie Barnett that I could totally identify with, and a hero in Sam that is so endearingly flawed that any woman worthy of her worn out VHS copy of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries will be happy to swoon over. Subtly powerful and amusingly acerbic, you will be gently reproved into agreeing in the power of love to transform us all. Laurel Ann, AustenproseI Also Recommend: Pride and Prejudice, Pride and Prejudice, The Annotated Pride and Prejudice, What Would Jane Austen Do?, The Trials of the Honorable F. Darcy.
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