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Godmersham Park
Oct. 30th, 2023 11:12 amI wasn't that keen on Miss Austen by Gill Hornby but Godmersham Park sounds a lot more appealing - and I did enjoy it a lot more. It has a similar concept - taking existing historical sources about Jane Austen and her family and filling in a lot of the gaps with fiction - but it's more adjacent to Jane than the other book, as the protagonist is her niece's governess - Anne Sharp.
I found the historical notes at the end about the actual historical information really fascinating, the book itself is well-written and engaging, Anne makes for a very interesting and sympathetic narrator, and the setting is extremely well realised.
I wasn't so keen on some of the background detail that had been fabricated for Anne's personal history, and the use of italics as emphasis in dialogue always irritates me (if the dialogue is well written and the characters are well portrayed, their emphasis should be obvious and the italics just take it too far) - but otherwise I really enjoyed this book.
I think I was willing to go with it more than Miss Austen because I was less invested in Anne as a real person, so I didn't mind so much the liberties taken in the fictional aspects. And the range of characters was broader, which added more colour to the book.
I found the historical notes at the end about the actual historical information really fascinating, the book itself is well-written and engaging, Anne makes for a very interesting and sympathetic narrator, and the setting is extremely well realised.
I wasn't so keen on some of the background detail that had been fabricated for Anne's personal history, and the use of italics as emphasis in dialogue always irritates me (if the dialogue is well written and the characters are well portrayed, their emphasis should be obvious and the italics just take it too far) - but otherwise I really enjoyed this book.
I think I was willing to go with it more than Miss Austen because I was less invested in Anne as a real person, so I didn't mind so much the liberties taken in the fictional aspects. And the range of characters was broader, which added more colour to the book.
