I sat around reading Colleen McCullough's Pride and Prejudice sequel today: The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet. This quote from facebook pretty much sums it up:"Colleen has lost her marbles along with her eyesight, can't believe an intellectual powerhouse wrote this drivel! Its dreadful."
It was so bad, I actually had to finish it. I had to speed-read the boring bits--of which there were many--but I had to be careful not to skip some fresh new stupidity.
McCullough has said (a) that she never cared for P&P--she thinks it reads like a first novel. Which is ironic because Mc's sequel reads like 15 year old fanfic. But anyway, why would you write a sequel to a book you didn't love??
(b) Because she says she wanted to piss off the literati. Which is just self-important. I can't throw a pen in the Fiction section without hitting a P&P sequel. They're a dime a dozen, and the literati do not read them. The only reason I chose this one was because of my faith in McCullough. She's just a really good storyteller! If she'd written this as her own original novel, then maybe she would have developed the characters properly, and plotted it evenly, and then her ridiculous plot would have been a rollicking good time.
My shock doesn't stem from what she did with P&P's character, but with her unbelievably horrible writing! Horrrrible. Read-out-loud-and-laugh horrible. Teach-new-writers-every-rule-on-how-not-to-write horrible.Ridiculous Plot: She takes the plain and pompous Mary character, 20 years later, turns her into a raving beauty full of independence and feist, and sets her out on a road trip. Along the way she is attacked by a highwayman called Captain Thunder. Then she is kidnapped by a little old man who lives in caves with 50 little children, simultaneously running a religious sect as well as an chemist's shop. Mary isn't even rescued by some fantastic escape plan, or rescue plan--the little old man blows up some of the tunnels, which jars open her jail door, and out she walks.
The Ladies of Missilonghi is a fantastic little jewel of a story, with a plain but sexed up heroine, and a good revenge plot. It, and Tim, are two of my favourite romance novels. And of course I loved the romance between Maggie and Ralph in The Thornbirds, and genuinely cared about the zillions of characters in it.
The last book I read from her was Morgan's Run, an interesting adventure about the convicts brought from the UK to found Norfolk Island. It's worth reading if only for the description of the ship passage (similar to what slaves went through on the Atlantic passage.) Très Bryce Courtenay. And apparently her Rome books are recommended reads in Washington, because the politicking is so spot on.So what happened?? Insanity.
Here's the first line that had me worried... on the very first page: "How much longer? Oh, how much longer?"
Holy crap. I could go on and on about the horrid writing and characters... but I will stop. My problem now is: What to read to cleanse the book from my mind? Another Regency, better written? Get my hands on a Georgia Nicholson? Something with really, really sharp excellent writing? I don't know. I could probably pick something blindfolded from my shelf and it would be better.
Ah! Ahhh!
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Wretched Book, 
5 comments:
Too bad, cuz your description of the plot sounded like a rollicking good time!
I pity the fool who messes with Jane Austen!
That plot description made my morning! Ridonculous!
A book she HAD to write to fulfill a contract?
She SAYS she was inspired after watching the series on tv. ...I think she's just too famous to get properly edited when she writes something unpublishable. And it has sold well at my store. I'm gonna have to start hiding it around the store, and stock way up on her other books to compensate.
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