Other Bennet Sister

It’s fanfic, start to finish. It even has some fanfic-y tropes like—let’s redeem the secondary characters, flesh them out, make the readers feel for them and—in a way do the same for the main characters. It did well, and I quite enjoyed it. Saying it’s fanfic is both accurate, it’s fanfic of Jane Austen, and it’s a bit of a joke, because it’s a legit piece of literature. Fanfic earned its reputation; I'm the last one to argue against it, but it’s always rewarding to see something that breaks the mould, so to speak. Past that—Well, it's written well enough that you aren't offended by the idea that someone is maybe “improving” on one of the best novels of its age. It's not trying to improve—but it is challenging the reader a bit. Because--spoilers ahead, maybe? Very mild, if so—it does point out some obvious truths that I personally didn't think about as much. Like, for example, the fact that Lizzy, while facing obstacles, never truly felt inferior to anyone. She doesn't feel like she is, and the reader certainly doesn't think so, either. She was not cowed by Darcy, by her mother, by Lady Catherine, etc And this book suggests that this is, itself, a privilege. A privilege her sister, Mary, doesn't share. And part of that is that Mary isn't as striking as Jane, isn't as vivacious as Kitty, isn't as brave as Lydia, and isn't as witty as Lizzy. And crucially (because we can't help but compare her to the heroine) her father doesn't love her like he does Lizzy. And that's—an interesting perspective. A far less rosy one, honestly. We all want to be Lizzy, I suppose, or Jane, or even Lydia or Kitty. But I suspect, we are all a lot more like Mary than we'd like to admit. Certainly, I suspect Austen herself was.