Jane Fairfax (Jane Austen Entertainments) [Paperback]

Let's get this point out of the way immediately, this is not a book written by an author who thinks she is Jane Austen. I cannot even conceive of Joan Aiken purposefully trying to copy the writing style of Jane Austen. If she did, then she failed completely. But, that doesn't mean that this author didn't write a very good book in the style of books written during the same time period in which Austen wrote. Sometimes the writing is too prosy, overly wordy, but overall this was a very good book from my standpoint.

Emma Woodhouse and Jane Fairfax are the same age. People in the village of Highbury think it the most natural thing in the world that the two children would be great friends. There is the difference in their stations in life, of course, but still they could be playmates and provide company for each other. This does not take into consideration at all that the two girls are so very different in nature that being forced to become friends sends them each in completely opposite directions. While Mrs. Woodhouse is alive, Jane is perfectly content to be the little ghost who slips into the house to practice the piano and take lessons from Emma's piano teacher. When Mrs. Woodhouse dies in childbirth her will reveals that she has left a legacy for Jane and childish jealousies combined with grief turn Emma completely away from Jane. Soon afterward Jane leaves Highbury to go to London to live with ColonelCampbell, his wife, and their daughter Rachel. The remainder of Book One relates Jane's life with Rachel, her family and the friends they make as they are growing up.

Book Two begins when Jane returns to Highbury because Rachel and her family have gone to Ireland. From here on the story follows "Emma" except that all the happenings are seen from the perspective of Jane Fairfax. I really, really enjoyed the entire book, but especially this portion where I realized what an impact Frank Churchill and the residents of Highbury had on Jane. How mortified she was to be secretly engaged to Frank, very much against her will in the beginning, and have to see his interactions with Emma. How frustrated she became with Mrs. Elton's insistence on finding a governess position for her. How differently Jane viewed the ball at Highbury, how she suffered because of the gift of the piano from an unknown source. Quite frankly, I would have liked to kick Frank Churchill in the shins more than once.

This was a very good book. Don't let it fool you though. There may be only 252 pages, but those pages are filled with writing in the style of 19th Century authors and close attention must be paid to understand what the author is saying. Yes, there were some times when Ms Aiken unnecessarily (in my opinion) drew our attention to the "Austen" aspects of this book, i.e. a widow with few financial resources living in Bath in Westgate Buildings, but I just overlooked those obvious references. If there is one aspect of the book which I would criticize, it is the appearance of such incredible maturity of thought and speech for very young girls. In fact, if you try to skim this book, you will entirely miss when Rachel Campbell and Jane go from eight to eighteen. This book was written around 1990 which makes it one of the earlier examples of presenting a Jane Austen book from another viewpoint. I think this author did a very good job and I will certainly add this to my list of favorite Austen-esque literature.

One of the teases in Emma, that most teasing of books, is that it leaves you wanting to know more about Jane Fairfax, and the feeling that Jane is probably the more interesting woman of the two. And Joan Aiken tells us more. She tells us what it was like for Jane, growing up in three rooms with two old ladies and wearing the Wodehouse girls' cast off clothes; what it was like leaving Highbury for London; and what really happened at Weymouth. She looks at the stark future facing Jane, if she had not met Frank Churchill. And she takes us on through the events of Emma, who missess so much, telling us what Jane was going through. Only Jane Austin is Jane Austin, but in many ways this is the more interesting book. It wears it two hundred years of hindsight lightly. Enjoy it, you are in safe hands.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I read this book with the wrong attitude. I must confess I never cared a lot for Jane Fairfax in the first place, while reading "Emma". But I liked "Emma" so much that I thought it interesting to hear the story told from another perspective. Well, partly, that is true. But the author takes such a long time- half the book- to get to the point where Jane comes to Highbury and sets off into the plot of "Emma" that any interest I ever had in Jane Fairfax was exhausted to a point where only the mention of Emma and Frank Churchill kept me reading on.

I cannot agree with my fellow reviewers and say that in the original novel by Jane Austen Jane Fairfax is more interesting than Emma. Emma is a beautiful, complex and -what is most important- fallible human being, Jane is the perfect virtuous well-behaved proper girl she is always contrasted with. I must admit that Jane is a little slighted in "Emma", she is mainly a plot device. But in this book, she is worse: she in a stereotype. And so is Emma, which made me really angry. They are shallow, ill-made and only in name like anything Jane Austen ever produced. The point of this book was- for me, at least- to provide Jane Fairfax's angle on the "Emma"-plot, but there it let out terribly. We learn almost nothing new, the encounters with Emma are dull and predictable and the encounters with Mr. Knightley and other caracters are slight and even more predictable. As for Frank Churchill: Jane Austen's whole point in writing Jane Fairfax was to show how completely wrong Emma is about her. And Joan Aiken makes her right, by introducing this rediculous Dixon-nonsense, and the way Jane consented to engage herself to Frank under these circumstances was so outrageously out of character that from that point I refused to take the book seriously.

Comparing this book with "Emma" is bad for both books. This one can only look as artificial and shallow as a really bad copy of a great masterpiece (which is exactly what it is) and to "Emma" it would be insulting.