Delia Barry

What on Earth could they have in common? They are the authors of the three books on CD I listened to on my recently-ended vacation. Candace Bushnell, of course, is the author of Sex and the City. I've never read the book, and found it interesting. It's a series of vignettes and clearly a number of them were the basis for SatC episodes. But there are a more than a few differences from the TV show. In the book, Carrie is not the central character, but is just one among many. Several of the characters who show up repeatedly in the book are people whom we've never seen in the series. Most surprisingly, there's no Miranda. This audio version is read by Cynthia Nixon, and she was marvelous. She totally nailed both Kim Cattrall's and Chris Noth's inflections. It was a bit spooky, in a good way.

The Danielle Steele book is called Bittersweet. It's an entertaining enough story about a housewife who sheds her domineering husband, reinstates her career as an award-winning news photographer, and finds the love of her life. However, it was the most poorly-written, verbose mess I've ever experienced, and this was an abridged version; I shudder to think what the original is like. It boggles the mind to think that this woman has legions of fans and has sold millions of books.

The Jane Austen book was Pride and Prejudice. I listened to it immediately after the Danielle Steele book, which was supremely unfair to Ms. Steele. It just doesn't get any better than this.

Wives Behaving Badly
by Elizabeth Buchan

This is a sequel to Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, which I read about a year ago. It takes place seven years after Minty stole Rose's job and husband Nathan from her. Nathan and Minty are now married with twin sons, a house that Minty has completely redecorated, strained relations with Nathan's adult children, and all the tedium that comes with daily life. Rose, on the other hand, is thinner and tanner, with a new and very successful career and a rekindled relationship with the man she loved before Nathan. And then an unexpected event throws all their lives into chaos.

I'll admit that I was more than a little happy to see that Minty's fortunes had taken a bit of a downturn from the last book while Rose's were on the upswing (which I'm sure had nothing to do with my age). Ultimately, the author is kind to her characters and gives them a better resolution than they perhaps deserved. Like the first one, there was nothing Earth-shattering about this book, but it was an enjoyable read.

Mr. Darcy's Daughters
by Elizabeth Aston

Twenty years after the end of Pride and Prejudice, the Darcys have five daughters (and two young sons, finally) whom they have left at home while they go to Constantinople for a year on a diplomatic mission. In their parents' absence, sisters Letitia, Camilla, Georgina, Belle, and Alethea get in and out of situations almost guaranteed to drive their uncle, Mr. (formerly Colonel) Fitzwilliam to distraction.

Jane Austen has become something of a cottage industry in the last few years. It seems that every time I walk into a bookstore, someone has written yet another sequel to Pride and Prejudice. (Why oh why is it never Sense and Sensibility?) I picked this one up because it seemed as though it was likely to be the least offensive of the bunch. All in all, I think I chose well. This book was charming and enjoyable. The Darcy sisters have adventures and there's even a marriage at the end, which I'm sure would have pleased Austen. And even if none of these sisters have the intelligence, wit, and charm of Elizabeth and Jane Bennett, they were still fun to know for a while.

A final note: one character was absolutely perfect. Lady Caroline Warren, neé Bingley, was just as loathsome and obnoxious as she was in the original novel. It was a delight to sneer at her again.

The Virgin Blue
by Tracy Chevalier

In the mid-sixteenth century, Isabelle du Moulin married Etienne Tournier after he got her pregnant. In the twenty-first century, her descendant Ella Turner moves to France with her husband Rich when he takes a job there. Unfortunately, Ella's experience of village life isn't at all what she expected and to fill up her time she begins to investigate her family history. This fairly mundane activity takes her on a voyage into her family's past and her own present that goes far beyond anything she had expected, and includes a tragic link across hundreds of years to Isabelle.

I really like Tracey Chevalier's work, and this book is no exception. Although I always have trouble with books (or movies, for that matter) that require excessive suspension of disbelief (in this case, supernatural connections between Isabelle and her descendants), this time it didn't really bother me here. I got particularly caught up in Ella's very modern difficulties, some of which hit very close to home. This was a good read.

These Three Remain
by Pamela Aiden

This is the third book in the "Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman" series, which is a retelling of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" from Mr. Darcy's point of view. A friend of mine gave me the first one after I experienced a serious trauma (a house fire) last fall, insisting that it would take me out of myself in no time. As always, she was right. I plowed through the first two books in record time, and although in retrospect I think the first book was the strongest, I read this one just as quickly as I read the first two. All three books give depth, personality, and an independent life to a character who is little more than a cardboard cut out of the perfect man in Austen's original.

This third volume covers approximately the last half of Austen's book, from the time at Rosings to the end. We get to experience firsthand Darcy's humiliation, anger, and pain at Elizabeth's rejection of his proposal as well as his determination to become a better man, one who is more worthy of the woman he loves. Along the way he learns to see Georgianna as the woman she is becoming rather than the little girl she was, begins to afford Bingley the respect he deserves, learns something interesting about Anne de Bourgh and her own dreams for her life, gets mixed up in international intrigue, gives Lady Catherine the what for, and gets the girl. I like him. Supposedly, Aiden is now working on a book about Georgianna. I look forward to reading it.