LONGBOURN by Jo Baker

Longbourn is the name of the Bennet estate in Pride and Prejudice.  Jo Baker’s novel has the same setting but focuses on the servants, particularly Sarah, a teenage housemaid.  The novel opens with Sarah doing laundry, and it’s an unpleasant task, making Sarah’s hands raw.  From my perspective, this was not an auspicious beginning, but the storyline does improve, although the pace is pokey at times.  Besides Sarah, the cast of characters includes Mrs. Hill, who manages to gain Mr. Bennet’s ear from time to time, and Polly, a child who is sort of Sarah’s apprentice.  A mysterious new footman named James Smith arrives on the scene, and his backstory, although pertinent to the plot, occupies a few too many pages that particularly drag.  However, he provides the necessary spark to a novel that is mostly about women, including the five Bennet daughters.  This novel feels very Jane Austen-like, although I suppose it never would have occurred to Jane to write about the personal lives of the servants, even though their problems have much more heft than those of the Bennet family.  Not that the Bennets are unkind to the servants; they are, like Jane, just oblivious.  The novel also emphasizes what few options and freedoms the servants really had.  The particularly slimy Wickham preys on Polly, who basks in his attention, even as Sarah is constantly vigilant to make sure that Wickham doesn’t “interfere with” Polly.  Basically, though, this novel is a love story that in some ways parallels that of Lizzie and Darcy.  Not everything is fully resolved at the end, leaving me to wonder if the author expected the reader to draw a particular conclusion.  She chooses to flesh out Polly’s future in some detail but left everyone else’s somewhat unsettled.