Posted in jane austen, Sense and Sensibility, tagged Laurie Viera Rigler, Margaret C. Sullivan, Masterpiece Classic, PBS Complete Jane Austen Series, PBS Movie Adaptation, Remotely Connected, Sense & Sensibility 2008 on March 28, 2008| 1 Comment »
Laurie Viera Rigler, author of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and Margaret C. Sullivan, author of the Jane Austen Handbook, have just completed their thoughts about Sense and Sensibility 2008. Click on PBS’s Remotely Connected to read their views.
Then tune in on PBS Sunday night at 9 P.M. to watch the movie on Masterpiece Classic. The film will be show in two parts on March 30th and April 6th.
Posted in jane austen, Jane Austen's enduring popularity, tagged jane austen, jane austen blogs, Laurie Viera Rigler on March 8, 2008| 1 Comment »
Today, Jane Austen is more popular than ever. Books, movie adaptations, sequels, and audio tapes are flooding the market. Her name is instantly recognizable, and her brand is HOT! Why not translate such fame into political glory?
Laurie Viera Rigler, the author of the current bestseller, The Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, has been writing a series of informative posts about Jane Austen’s life and novels in conjunction with PBS’s Total Jane Austen. During a recent talk at Whittier Library in California, she discussed the idea of electing Jane Austen for President. According to her, Jane has character, experience, and courage. Her reasoning seems good enough for me:
If we go by the assumption that there is a little bit of the author in each of her characters—well, at least in each of the characters she likes—than who can lead the country better than someone who has the wit and intelligence of Elizabeth Bennet, the diplomacy of Anne Eliot, the prudence and strength of Elinor Dashwood, and the stay-the-course steadfastness of Fanny Price?
To read more of Laurie’s interesting political take, click here. Thank you Laurie, for giving me an alternative candidate. I was straddling the fence until you mentioned Jane.
Posted in Book review, tagged Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Laurie Viera Rigler on August 2, 2007| 1 Comment »
Imagine waking up in someone else’s body in another time period with no clue of how you got there or how you’ll make it back home. That’s the situation author Laurie Viera Rigler has set up in Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. One day our heroine Courtney Stone wakes up as Jane Mansfield, a 30-year-old spinster living in turn of the 19th Century England. The day before she was in Los Angeles nursing her hurt over a breakup with a lout of a boyfriend, and the next thing she knows she is confronted by a strict, harsh-eyed Regency mama who deplores her daughter’s unmarried state.
Laurie Viera Rigler takes us on a fun and frothy romp through the Regency period as our heroine encounters one bewildering situation after another trying to understand what’s happened to her and why. Readers who are expecting a time travel novel with the depth and breadth of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series might be disappointed in this book’s superficial fun. But the fans that adored Jude Devereaux’s Knight in Shining Armor or the time travel movies Somewhere in Time, Kate and Leopold, and Big will definitely have a rollicking good time.
The themes of intrigue, romance, and a fish out of water are fleshed out with the cultural shocks that our heroine experiences as she becomes accustomed to a world of chaperons, lack of running water, a cool and calculating mother, and unhygienic hostelries. What I found most interesting about this time travel book is that as Jane, Courtney looks entirely different. In her regency persona she is taller and prettier, and can embroider with the skill of an experienced seamstress. Although Courtney has all of Jane’s talents and some of her memories, her thoughts and emotions are rooted in the 21st century. This dichotomy places us firmly in the mind of our bewildered heroine, who as Courtney is exceedingly attracted to the suitor her alter ego Jane rejected. It doesn’t hurt that our hero, Charles, is as dapper as Mr. Darcy or Captain Wentworth.
There are a few problems of logic, as all time travel novels share. Jane’s strange behavior and lack of memory are explained away as the result of a fall from a horse. And although Courtney was an avid reader of Jane Austen’s novels, as Jane she has a hard time coming to grips with the lack of baths and ready-to-wear dresses and a tightly circumscribed world that is not as romantic as she had once thought.
As a reader who is interested in the Regency Era, I would also have loved to have read more details about dress, manners, interiors, and architecture. These were spare, but because of this economy of detail, the book moves along quickly. Frankly, I couldn’t put it down at times. I also have a confession to make: This is the first Jane Austen fan book or spin off that I have finished. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict is as light and pleasing as a summer sherbet, which, as we all know, is a perfect tonic for a hot summer day.
I give it three out of three regency fans
Posted in Book review, jane austen, tagged Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Laurie Viera Rigler on August 1, 2007|
Lady Anne is the most well read of our Janeites of the James group when reading about all things Austen, including Jane’s fan fiction. She has agreed to read Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and report on her impressions of this novel out in stores tomorrow. Lady Anne is one tough reader to please when it comes to any topic pertaining to the Regency Era. Faint praise from her is fine praise indeed. Here, then, is her review. Mine will arrive in a few short days.
Courtney Stone is a 30-ish single living in LA with a nothing job, a crummy apartment, and lousy taste in men. Like many in her situation, she obsesses over trivialities and takes solace in vodka and the occasional Xanax. But she finds her best relief from the woes of her life in re-reading Jane Austen. Jane Mansfield, a 30-ish single living in Regency England, lives at home with her harsh mother and vague, artistic father. Like many in her situation, she sees only misery and unhappiness before her. In her search for a way out, she consults a fortuneteller, who has apparently done a few terms at Hogwarts School, and who, in the aftermath of a riding accident, slips the very 21st century mind and psyche of Courtney into the body and life of the Regency Jane.
In the fairly predictable incidents that unfold, author Laurie Viera Rigler takes a clear look at the marrying money theme that runs through Austen’s books, as well as the realities of everyday living for the gentried classes and their servants. Courtney/Jane, while chafing against the chaperonage inflicted upon her, a little strict by 1813 for a woman of 30 even by Regency standards, learns to appreciate the fabric of the life she got so much comfort from reading about. It doesn’t hurt that Mr. Edgeworth, an eminently respectable suitor, is also charming and handsome, and everything she had looked for in a man, but couldn’t find in 21st Century LA. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict is a good summer read, and fun for every Jane Austen fan.
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