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Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

by Laurie Rigler

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict Cover

Review-a-Day   (What is Review-a-Day?)

"Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict... places her protagonist, in dreamlike fashion, right in the middle of a classic Jane Austen setting. Courtney, a modern L.A. woman, wakes up from a drunken evening of lamenting her fiancé's infidelity and finds herself in the body of Jane Mansfield, a nineteenth-century unmarried woman, recovering from a fall off a horse that resulted in a nasty blow to the head.

Rigler does an excellent job of conveying the shock of Courtney's transition to life in the nineteenth century, complete with the smells, sounds, frighteningly archaic medical practices, and domineering social protocol." Danielle Marshall, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

The Los Angeles Times bestseller that has Austen lovers hooked

After nursing a broken engagement with Jane Austen novels and Absolut, Courtney Stone wakes up to find herself not in her Los Angeles bedroom or even in her own body, but inside the bedchamber of a woman in Regency England. Who but an Austen addict like herself could concoct such a fantasy?

Not only is Courtney stuck inside another woman's life, she is forced to pretend she actually is that woman; and despite knowing nothing about her, she manages to fool even the most astute observer. For her borrowed body knows how to speak without slaying the King's English, dance without maiming her partner, and embroider as if possessed by actual domestic skill.

But not even Courtney's level of Austen mania has prepared her for the chamber pots and filthy coaching inns of nineteenth-century England, let alone the realities of being a single woman who must fend off suffocating chaperones, condom-less seducers, and marriages of convenience. Enter the enigmatic Mr. Edgeworth, a suitor who may turn out not to be a familiar species of philanderer after all.

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About the Author

Laurie Viera Rigler is a freelance book editor who teaches writing workshops, including classes at Vroman's, Southern California's oldest and largest independent bookstore. Laurie lives in Los Angeles and holds a lifetime membership in the Jane Austen Society of North America. This is her first novel.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Susan Wiget, June 6, 2009 (view all comments by Susan Wiget)
This hilarious romp of a time travel novel is written in contemporary style but with a decidedly Regency setting. After reading the blurb, I expected the novel to begin in the twenty-first century, but characteristic of twenty-first century novels, it plunges directly into the action, with the protagonist, “Jane Mansfield” waking up in strange surroundings after a riding accident. The trouble is, this is no longer the real Jane Mansfield but Courtney Strong, a twenty-first century woman trapped in early nineteenth-century Jane Mansfield’s body. The plot reminded me of both Pride and Prejudice and Doctor Who.

While the writing style is contemporary, the richly described setting is straight out of a Jane Austen novel, and the characters appropriately speak as if they’re from a Jane Austen novel. Jane’s mother in particular comes across as a character one would expect to find in a novel by Austen; she is narcissistic and devoid of affection or kindness toward her daughter. The character Louisa is reminiscent of Mrs. Jennings in Sense and Sensibility but proves to be rather more sinister.

No novel by Austen would include such details as the protagonist desperately needing to go pee and the servant presenting her with a chamber pot. Nor would an Austen novel involve the protagonist uttering a lewd joke to a man who proposes to her. As I read, I both laughed and felt painfully embarrassed alongside the main character.

On a more serious side, the main character sprinkles the narration with feminist analysis of the era in which she has found herself trapped in more than one sense. She is also appalled by how hygienically challenged Regency society is.

This is a delightful and insightful novel that is almost impossible to put down.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780452289727
Author:
Rigler, Laurie
Publisher:
Plume Books
Author:
Rigler, Laurie Viera
Subject:
Contemporary Women
Publication Date:
May 2008
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
293
Dimensions:
8.04x5.34x.67 in. .57 lbs.

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