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Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife masterfully alligns Jane Austen’s characters, taking us further into their lives and intrigue.  Linda Berdoll, I am in awe.

  Nearly ten years hence, my friend Debbie Beckwith and I established a connection over all things Austen.  We formed our own society and came together for an exchange of cards, crumpets and empire waist dress designs.  Of course, we also came together to view movies based on our beloved author’s novels.  To say that we love Jane Austen would be an understatement.  Debbie went so far as to name her daughter Elinor, but alas I had all sons.  When Debbie recently sent a list of novels she had been perusing based on Jane’s dear characters, I was not tempted.  Not as a true fan.  But then came an irresistible curiosity toward the novel Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife by Linda Berdoll.  Debbie revealed it to be saucy.  Hmmmm.

  Not being one to read the bodice rippers and not able to face buying something so debaucherous in my own B&N, I decided to wait until a trip to Springfield to pluck the book from the shelf in anonymity.  I fought back a blush as I browsed the pages in the quiet of the store, but couldn’t put it down.  Indeed!  Henry Fielding is sniggering somewhere in an English grave. 
 
  Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife picks up where Pride and Prejudice gave way.  Mr. Darcy has just proposed to our dear Lizzy.  Since Elizabeth Bennet is a chaste lady of her time, she must discover first what it means to ignite passion and then what it means to be the Mistress of Pemberly.  We get a closer peep than the servants as Lizzy moves from virginal miss to passionate madame, baudy enough to set Darcy’s hounds to howling. 
 
  Home again, I read into the night by the soft glow of my lamp, my eyes wide with intrigue.  The regular Jane Austen community is in an uproar over this scandalous enlightenment, but not I.  Not when I also count Isabel Allende as another of my favorite authors.  Now I shall include Linda Berdoll on that same list. 
 
  Amidst the passion is a dear story of Darcy and Lizzy’s struggles together as man and wife: their relentless hopes for an heir to Pemberly, to marry off Miss Georgianna Darcy, to endure the continual absurdity of the Bennets at large, and to avoid any contact with Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, the infamous Mr. Wickham, still ever determined to glean scraps from the Darcy table while sawing away at the legs of that same table.  The book is written with Jane’s flair, language and humor, a gifted achievement in and of itself.  Yet Berdoll has dispensed with some of Jane’s rambling style that dated her as a pen and quill author (pre-computer).  Berdoll masterfully edits her work so that the story keeps your eyes moving forward without having to reread bits and pieces as I sometimes must with my beloved Jane.
 
  At the crux of this novel, Mr. Darcy, the king of pride and prejudice himself, strives to both please his wife and put at ease the ghosts in his closet.  Yes, ghosts.  His disapproval of a local lord and lady who have claimed an illigitamate heir is tempered only with his own misgivings that he himself may have fathered an illegitimate now working on his own estate.  Unfortunately, the young man may well be Mr. Wickham’s unclaimed heir instead, since the mother in question had seduced them both at very early ages before the late Mr. Darcy had discovered the servant’s mischief and sent her from Pemberly, well away from his young son Darcy and charge Wickham.
 
  And then, why did the late Mr. Darcy take such a keen interest in the boy Wickham to begin with?  In dealing with his ghosts, the current master of Pemberly may discover more family ghosts than previously anticipated. 
 
  Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife:  Pride and Prejudice Continues is a literary work of monumental proportions in its own right, taking up the mantle of Austen with distinguishment.  Should Austen have been unbound by particulars of society, I believe she would have relished this endeavor herself.  I am already on the hunt for Linda Berdoll’s sequel to the sequel.

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