Nom de Plume

In my recent rereading of all things Austen, I plucked Mr Darcy Takes a Wife off my bookshelf again for a quick reread. And while my original post on the book still stands, I wanted to add a couple of things.

The story’s pretty good — perhaps a little over-the-top and sometimes unconvincing. Darcy is unremittingly uxorious; Elizabeth adapts to gracious living with complete ease. Neither rings absolutely true to character. Still, it doesn’t really matter because, after all, this is a romance, and we are all so grateful for having a continuation of Pride and Prejudice that we’re willing to overlook a lot.

The language, on the other hand, is appallingly bad. Midway through, I started getting really irritated with the howbeits and albeits. There’s at least one per page. In fact, the whole book reads as though Berdoll first wrote in modern day English — and then went back and tortured her prose into twisted convolutions of itself. Harsh? Perhaps, but sobeit.