The Bar Sinister: Pride and Prejudice Continues... [Paperback]

Well... I should let you decide yourself. In the beginning of the book Lydia finds out that EliSabeth and Jane are engaged to be married. She returns home to educate her elder sisters on the particulars of the life they are about to face. At this point I am getting scared to follow the story line..., however.. I continue..

It goes much deeper right after Mr. Darcy's and Elizabeth's wedding. Here is a quote for you:

"Impatient that he did not follow her reasoning, she explained to her exceedingly satisfied husband, thusly, "My body obviously cannot meet your needs. I thought it was only at first, but you see now, it is not. I am stunted and cannot perform satisfactory as your wife."
"Lizzy, that is absurd!"
"'Tis not absurd! You yourself said, "This will not do.' Indeed, last night you said again and again that I was too small."
"I said you were small, meaning..." he searched for an explanation.
"Paltry," she answered for him.
"No. I meant, small ... diminutive ... petite. Lush and tight."
At that unprecedented explicitness, he well-night blushed.
Then, hastily, he continued, "It was a compliment, Lizzy, not a complaint. As for my saying 'it will not do,' I only meant it would not do for me to continue to hurt you. That is my failing, not yours. I must rein myself in, for you are not too small, I am ..."
He flailed about for a delicate way to put it. " ... rather large."
"Oh"
This was an interesting turn of events. This entire conundrum was the fault of his body, not hers.
She bid, "Do you mean too large?"
"I mean to say, you are small, but not too small."
"You mean to say, you are not large, but too large?"
"I am not all that large ..." he made a frustrated little half-snort, obviously unhappy at the direction the conversation was taking, but that did not deter her curiosity."

... And so on... the rest of the page is covered with a very entertaining debate about the difference between "not too small" and "too large". I finished at about this point. I hope this reference is helpful and gives you a good idea of the book you are about to purchase.

First the bad stuff:
The author has a habit of using nonsensical language. Beyond the fact that the characters often quote Latin, which the author does not bother to translate for us non-Latin speakers, she also uses words which I'm sure are just products of her imagination instead of the common vernacular at that time. I leave it up to you to figure out what body parts she is speaking of when she uses the words: collywobble, whinneymegs, (and my personal favorite) larrydoodle.

As you can probably tell from above I doubt the author spent very much time researching her material before writing this book. From the way it is written it appears that the author didn't even bother to read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and probably got the basic storyline from watching the BBC movie. The most obvious example of this is in her description of Mr. Collins. First off she makes his first name Thaddeus, which if you are an adept P&P fan you will realize is a big mistake, because Jane Austen says his first name is William. Her descriptions of Mr. Collins and his behavior you can tell she got straight out of the movie and at times they are contradictory to Austen's descriptions of him. The most notable one being that Berdoll describes Mr. Collins as being rather short while Austen writes that he is tall.

Now for the good stuff:
Berdoll was able to do something that Jane Austen would have never been able to do during her lifetime--be able to explore the intimate side of Darcy and Elizabeth's relationship (i.e. SEX). Jane Austen probably didn't write a P&P 2 because she knew that without the sex the book would be quite boring. Berdoll makes the relationship mature in ways that would be quite scandalous in Austen's time. She also talks about issues, which we know occured during that time, but which women of that day weren't allowed to discuss (at least openly) such as infidelity, infertility, illegitimate children, etc. I think adding these elements helps one to understand each character's persona a bit more.

While the book is a bit lengthy, I will admit that it is an ok read. When you get bored you can easily skip to the juicy parts--and boy are they juicy !!! However, if you are a die-hard Austen fan or think you will be offended by the intense sexual relationships between characters then I will say this book is not for you !!!