Austen-mania birthed several sequels to Pride and Prejudice-Colleen McCullough’s is the latest. The audiobook has a fine narrator in Nicki Paull, whose stage experience is drawn on for a beautifully enunciated reading with individually shaped voices for the different characters. This makes the novel more enjoyable as an audio experience than its book counterpart. McCullough’s period setting is successful, although it’s more like Catherine Cookson trying to be Dickens than Jane Austen in style. The writing is more modern than any novel Austen penned, and the character transformation might disconcert Austen fans. McCullough focusses on Mary, the plain and pontificating middle sister. Mary is now 38, outstandingly beautiful and extraordinarily intelligent, with the other characters downgraded- Darcy to an unintelligent cold tyrant, Lizzy to an ignored wife bereft of lively wit, Jane ever-pregnant to selfish Bingley. Freed by her mother’s death and inspired by a radical newspaper writer, Mary decides to write a book about England’s poor rather than dwindle further into boring spinsterhood, and so begins the adventure. Man after man falls wildly in love with this independent woman-including the fiery newspaper writer. Recommended as pleasant listening in the style of Rosamunde Pilcher and Maeve Binchy.

Ingrid Heyn is a writer, bookseller, web designer and singer

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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