Elinor and Marianne [Paperback]

While I generally enjoy modern writers' attempts to continue Jane Austen's stories, I found this book to be badly flawed. The plot is too complicated. Willoughby returns. His Aunt Allen has forgiven him and left him the legacy she took from him in Sense and Sensibility. So, he no longer needs his wife's money. She has tired of him anyway, it seems, and left him. So he proceeds to seduce Marianne, who is pregnant, and the younger Dashwood sister, Margaret. In the meantime, the wealthy Ferrars family, including Mrs. Ferrars and her younger son Robert, have lost all their money due to Robert's high living and ill-considered investments. Mrs. Ferrars loses her sanity as she lost her money. Edward chooses to stay close to his mother in her time of need, neglecting his parish at Delaford and his wife, Elinor. Elinor returns to Barton Cottage to help her mother. Mrs. Ferrars also flees to Barton Cottage having no place else to go and believing Mrs. Dashwood has stolen linen and china belonging to the Norlands estate. Colonel Brandon inexplicably leaves his newly pregnant wife to squire his first love's daughter on a shopping trip to London. Marianne believes Colonel Brandon has abandoned her having just discovered she is pregnant with their first child. And to top all of this off, we find out in the middle of the novel that Robert Ferrars, having fled England to escape creditors and recoup his wealth, has been eaten by cannibals in darkest Africa!! EGAD!! This plot is unbelievable.

Even more unbelievable is that in the last eight pages, Colonel Brandon goes back to Delaford. Mrs. Dashwood saves Margaret from Willoughby, who has adopted a curiously modern Hippie lifestyle and who conveniently sails for America aboard the Faerie Queen (a ship not the poem but, I think, we are supposed to infer some metaphorical significance). Marianne sees the light about Willoughby (once again) and returns to Colonel Brandon who she finally realizes is her one true love (again). Edward and Elinor forgive each other (again). Mrs. Ferrars gets a new cottage with a pavilion compliments of Sir John. And everyone lives happily ever after, I guess. EGAD!! Poor Jane Austen. I assume she has given up rolling over in her grave having had so many really bad sequels written from her books but, still, this one is very badly plotted.

One thing I did rather like about this book is the epistolary style. If the plot hadn't been so convoluted, the letters would have been pleasant. I also rather enjoyed, in a somewhat perverse way, the new character of Mrs. Percy Roberts, the widow of the Rector of Delaford. Her letters to Elinor and to Colonel Brandon present an overly pious, church lady constantly "managing" things. If the book had been plotted better Mrs. Roberts would have been an intermittent irritant. As it was, she became an intermittent relief from a relentlessly irksome plot.

This is just awful. I was just a few pages into the book, when I got irritated. It is so ridiculous. And it's a sequel to the film, not the book!

I read the other reviews and I laughed. The plot is a bit wild, but enjoyable. If you liked the 1995 movie "Sense and Sensibility" with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, you will enjoy this book. If you're a rabid Austenite, well, stick with something else.