Jane is a young New York woman who never seems to find the right man – perhaps because of her secret obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. When a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-obsessed women, however, Jane’s fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined. Is this total immersion in a fake Austenland enough to make Jane kick the Austen obsession for good, or could all her dreams actually culminate in a Mr. Darcy of her own? 

‘Austenland‘ had been gathering virtual dust in my TBR pile since 2014. I rescued it as part of 2024 TBR Challenge, half expecting to set it aside fairly quickly. To my surprise, it was an amusing, energetic read that went in directions that I didn’t expect. It was more subtle and more engaging than the movie version, which went for laughs without being too concerned about Jane’s interior turmoil.

The humour in the book worked for me because it didn’t try to hard too be funny. The humour felt natural, not forced.

Interspersing the Austenland narrative with a chronological reprise of Jane’s (depressingly unsuccessful) relationships with men gave the story more depth and helped me to understand why she had retreated into an obsession with finding a man who could be her Colin Firth / Mr Darcy as opposed to the various incarnations of Mr Collins or Captain Wickham that she’d encountered along the way.

What made the book come alive for me was Jane’s inability to immerse herself fully in the Austen roleplay. It wasn’t that she lacked the background knowledge to play her part. It was the ‘playing’ that she couldn’t reconcile herself to. She could see the appeal of giving herself up to the fantasy and letting one of the faux Regency gentlemen woo her and tell her how wonderful she was but she slowly came to realise that doing not only wouldn’t kill off her Darcy obsession but it wouldn’t feed it either. The more opportunity she had to immerse herself in Austenland, the more she understood that what she was really hungry for was something real.

The ending was clever. It managed to keep the tension high, tighten up the humour and develop Jane as a person.

I listened to the audiobook version of ‘Austenland’, perfectly narrated by the inimitable and much missed Katherine Kellgren.