P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley
I've been dithering for a while about whether or not to read this, both b/c it's gotten mixed reviews and b/c I find the cottage industry of Pride and Prejudice sequels/takeoffs to be off-putting and mildly distasteful. But James' books have been recommended to me a few times, and this NYT review convinced me. Unfortunately, I wasn't really feeling this AT ALL. Even ignoring the butchering of classic characters, there's a lot to dislike here--overly stilted dialogue, really clumsy exposition ("You know Mr so-and-so, you were there when blah blah blah and have met him a zillion times"), and really bad attempts to sound Austen-ish. Plus the mystery--involving that jerk Wickham as a murder suspect--is really boring and the big reveal feels blah. Very disappointing. C.
The clumsy cramming in of other Austen characters and the ENDLESS discussions of everything when absolutely nothing of interest happens is what killed me. I just kept wishing they hadn't cancelled the dance, because at least that would have been some action! I mean even finding the body was a snooze!
ReplyDeleteAlso, that NY Times reviewer is on crack saying this biz: "The greatest pleasure of this novel is its unforced, effortless, effective voice."
ReplyDeleteA LOT of the reviews for this were very positive and I honestly don't understand why.
ReplyDeleteMaybe because it wasn't aggressively terrible, just aggressively boring.
ReplyDeleteThat's almost worse than being aggressively terrible! Like, we probably wouldn't have kept reading if it was terrible.
ReplyDeleteExcellent point! I wouldn't have kept listening to it if the voice had not been so comforting.
ReplyDelete