A review by se_wigget
Darcy's Story by Janet Aylmer

3.0

 

Darcy’s Story is Pride and Prejudice from a different perspective, that of Fitzwilliam Darcy, as Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern are Dead is Hamlet from a different perspective. Within the first couple pages, I quickly became aware that this is fan fiction (though the writing is much more skilled than fan fiction I’ve come across online) and that the author’s style isn’t as funny and witty as Jane Austen’s. However, as the author points out in a note at the back of the book, the witty and satirical tone of Pride and Prejudice is appropriate since it’s from Elizabeth Bennet’s vivacious and witty perspective (although it’s in third person), and Darcy’s Story is appropriate more serious and brooding, since it’s from Darcy’s perspective. That said, Jane Austen would have written it with her customary wit. 

 

Darcy’s Story begins chronologically before Pride and Prejudice, because it covers the time when Wickham elopes with Darcy’s sister Georgiana. Since most of the novel takes place at the same time as Pride and Prejudice, the author has taken much of Jane Austen’s dialog, but this time around we witness Darcy’s thoughts and emotions. The book does continue after the classic novel ends, because it includes the couple’s preparations for married life and it includes the wedding. I think this ending could have been omitted. 

 

If you’d like to learn more about Fitzwilliam Darcy, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and Colonel Fitzwilliam, you’ll enjoy this book. (But a more page-turning and well-written book is Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler.)