Madness in Meryton
By: Jayne Bamber / Narrated By: Amanda S. Brown
Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins
P&P meets Groundhog Day—flashes of brilliance with flashes of tedium, but some chucklesome moments as well… plus GREAT narration!
So it goes like this, see. One of my FAVE movies in the whole wide world is “Groundhog Day” where one is given to contemplate Life Without End. How would we behave, and would we actually become our best selves given the… uhm… complete lack of options. Or p’raps the complete PLETHORA of them?
And so begins Madness in Meryton by the author of Northfanger, obviously an author willing to dip into the creative well o’ the mind to pull out stories that ain’t of the norm. It’s November 20th, Elizabeth wakes up in sister Mary’s bed, jarred to by an elbow to the head. It’s off to Meryton for Market Day where not only do the usual suspects turn up, but Elizabeth gets thiiiiiiis close to having an enjoyable conversation with Mr. Darcy, but she runs into George Wickham, not in the Militia yet but about to enlist, and she’s made a small purchase from an old woman, Baba Romilda, a Romani woman she’s fond of.
Things go well enough.
Next morning, she should be waking up in bed with Jane, right? Cuz there’ve been To-Dos with Mr. Bingley and Jane’s been all atwitter. -BUT- elbow to the head again, Mary’s bed, has Elizabeth been sleepwalking?
Next day, same elbow, Mary’s bed, and now Elizabeth is well and truly flummoxed. She tells Jane exACTly what Jane’s about to say, what’s about to happen, how the day will go, etc. etc. who knows what’s going on etc.
The whole story is of Elizabeth’s attempts to have a Perfect Day, to do just what is right and proper, damn the consequences, so that she might FINALLY get to November 21st.
Now, m’ husband and I stroll each evening, and as I was pensive, he asked what I’d been listening to. I told him, and then I had to opine that, really, I wasn’t sure that I was enjoying myself. After all, the Groundhog Day trope is such that everything is repeated with just the sliiiiiightest variations as craft tweaks. I mean, yeh yeh yeh Elizabeth gets to the point that every time she wakes up with Mary whonking her on the head she wants to flat-out screeeeam, but dude! so did I. Tweaks to the plot, Lizzie’s choices throughout the days are so minor with consequences not immediate; we only know that said tweaks were either not enough, or they were wrong by the fact that Yet Again! Next Morning! elbow to the head, November 20th to repeat.
Might I say that there were bouts of extreme tedium, tho’ I confess that I never, not once, was so unengaged that I found I’d dozed off, only to find m’self in Mary’s bed getting thonked in the head, Lizzie at my side as well? No, this audiobook is never coma-inducing, but it’s just sloooow at times.
Things start picking up when we discover (Not muuuuuuch of a spoiler…) that other characters eventually enter the secret as they enter the plot, the quest to get to the 21st. With those characters Coming To, things get interesting. And there are amusing and thought-provoking asides whereby a character here, a character there, has a Bad Day and just shrieks: Lump This, I’m just gonna do what I need to do to get through ANOTHER NOVEMBER 20th. Yessss, humans being humans are always more amusing.
Perfect narration tho from Fave Narrator Amanda S. Brown. She is just beYONd suited to Regencies, primarily JAFanFic. Altho’ I must applaud her work in Gretchen and the Bear as being her best work that I’m aware of as of this date. She does each character written so very well, her menfolk aren’t growly and they are occasionally swoon-worthy. But mostly, in this story, some of our usual characters are crafted with an eye towards rehabilitation. I’m sooooo tired of authors making Wickham just an out and out dastard, have even listened to one JA Variation wherein he was so despicable and EVIL that little Georgiana finally has enough and actually blasts him dead with a firearm. I mean, that’s extreme, but Wickham was written as the Ultimate Evil. Here, Wickham has many layers as written, and one is kinda sorta on the fence about him, wondering if he’s up to some wicked game, or what. Brown makes her portrayal of him true to the writing, no sneering, no wicked threatening, just a big ol’ HUH? What’s Going On? which was delightful. And to be fair, P&P has a motley crew of characters with less than sterling character. Mr. Collins. Caroline. Lady Catherine. Brown voices each of them to where they’re all nicely nuanced, even whilst being laugh out loud silly, or in your face poignant.
I s’pose that means there are Kudos Galore for Jayne Bamber as well cuz all those shades of gray were very much appreciated and were not only a relief if you’ve done plenty o’ JAFF and sequels and spinoffs, etc. etc. et freaking cetera. Bamber wrote a grand amount of little surprises. And tho of COURSE there’s the obligatory Epilogue, Bamber used it for a final little twist that some found annoying but which I enjoyed most heartily. I didn’t feel that the whole November 20th NEVER Ends was a torture (Trial, sure but nothing so horrific as tortuous) to the point that the person responsible was evil; I thought: Ahhhhh, delightfully devious and pragmatic as all get-out. So HA!
Come for Bamber’s twist on the trope, stay for writing that’s true for the era, enjoy Brown’s narration, but do get ready for this being more than a pithy li’l One Day Listen. It takes a while to get going, but it has a unique charm.
And I’m off to watch “Groundhog Day,” cuz now I do believe I have a true hankerin’ for a look-see…!
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