Saturday, December 21, 2013

Longbourn by Jo Baker

If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them. 
In this irresistibly imagined below stairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.

Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic—into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars—and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own. (goodreads)
I really enjoyed this book. If you love Jane Austin's characters you will love the housemaids in the Bennet house as well. Longbourn made the Bennet home come alive. While reading this book you felt as if you lived in the same house as Miss Elizabeth, Jane, Kitty, Lydia, Mary and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. You know what time the housemaids got up to light the fires and draw the water. You know how the housemaids scrubbed the laundry, prepared meals and went to Meryton to get supplies.
If you need a good book to read this one will not disappoint. (well...it did not disappoint me:)

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