Wednesday Review – The Time Baroness by Georgina Young-Ellis

You’d think, it being Christmas week, that our MWiDP Reviewer in Residence Gerry McCullough would be taking a break, but not  a bit of it.  In the early hours of Christmas Day morning she was hammering at my door with the latest review in her hands, and what a Christmas present that turned out to be! Talk about “just what I always wanted”!

Well, some of that’s true. I haven’t had a chance to read The Time Baroness myself yet, but as a big Jane Austen fan it’s been sitting on my Kindle taunting me a while now, and I’m really looking forward to it. Especially having seen what Gerry has to say about it.

As I’m nearly running late with this post I’ll hand over to Gerry now to avoid further delay. Here’s Gerry.

 

The Time Baroness by Georgina Young-Ellis

 reviewed by Gerry McCullough

 

Calling all Jane Austin fans!

(Of whom, I may say, I consider myself one of the most serious.) I first read Pride and Prejudice at the age of nine, borrowing my sister’s copy and reading it in bed at night when I was supposed to be sleeping. I’ve no idea how many times I’ve read it since then, but enough to make it essential for me to take a break at three or four different times, and stop rereading it for a good number of years, until it became less over familiar. And, of course, I’ve read all the other books, plus her juvenilia and unfinished and unpublished works, her letters, and many different Lives, as well as seeing numerous films, stage plays, and TV adaptations.

So when I first read some of The Time Baroness on Authonomy, my interest was sparked straightaway. And now, reading the whole, and much edited, book, I’m really impressed.

Georgina Young-Ellis has written an amazing story, half historical fiction and half science fiction. Unusual or what?

Cassandra Franklin, to give her the name the heroine uses throughout the book, has always dreamt of living in Jane Austin’s time, of experiencing what it was really like to be alive in the period of the Regency in the early 19^th century in England.  Something lots of Jane Austin fans would love to do, no doubt. But for Cassandra, because she lives in 2120, when time travel has become a reality, the dream can actually come true. And so, with Cassandra, we step through the portal, and emerge into the dark evening streets of London in January 1820, just round the corner from The White Hart – and the story begins.

Georgina Young-Ellis has achieved two very different things here. Both, I would imagine, equally hard, and both requiring considerable research.  The first is to make the ‘scientific’ part of the book believable. I’m no scientist, but it seems to me that she has managed this really well, especially in the later part of the book where Cassandra returns temporarily to 2120 to gather up equipment for a very important jailbreak.  The various new technological achievements available to her are described realistically and in a way which rings true. We feel that possibly in another hundred years or so at least some of these tools may have been invented.

The second is to make Cassandra’s time in 1820 as accurate as possible. Here, I would claim a little more expertise; and although possibly not quite everything is exactly right, so much of it certainly is that the reader is happy to sink into the life of the period and simply enjoy being there.

Not only is the book set in the Regency (by Cassandra’s deliberate choice, three years after Jane Austen’s death – she can’t risk disrupting any of the writer’s life by impinging on it, and possibly spoiling something which she has written by changing Austen’s experience) – but the plot is also very much of Jane Austen’s type.

There are only a few pieces of fast moving action, although those are gripping. Otherwise the action moves fairly slowly, and is mainly character based. Cassandra’s first meeting with Benedict Johnston manages to send prickles up the reader’s spine. This is clearly going to lead to something. Their relationship is beautifully developed, and for most of the rest of the book we are aware of the difficulties as Benedict himself can’t be, and as Cassandra of course is; and we are left constantly wondering how this can possibly be resolved in any way which will feel satisfactory. 

Enough to say that Georgina Young-Ellis resolves the problem unexpectedly and successfully, leaving us happy with the outcome. And moreover when we look back we can see that the seeds for this development were cunningly planted in various ways from the start of Cassandra’s adventure, and in the fact that she left out an important part of her pre-arranged story when telling Benedict why she had left America, and that therefore the subject of slavery was not, in fact, discussed between them at an earlier stage. For if it had been so discussed, before their relationship had moved so far, the outcome might have been very different.

The major characters, especially Cassandra, are well drawn, easy to relate to and full of life. They develop as we get to know them through the various scenes and conversations. The minor characters also (and the book is full of them) come to life easily, and Lady Charles in particular shows her true character more and more as the book goes on. Interestingly, Cassandra is fairer in her view of this lady than we, as readers, feel like being, and rightly gives her credit for seeing the truth, when as readers we simply want to say, ‘What a horrible woman!’

The scene where Cassandra helps a farmer’s wife, the local ‘midwife,’ with a birth, is particularly well done. This, of course, is not something which Jane Austin would have written about, but the experience brings us, and Cassandra, closer to the realities of life for the ordinary woman at that time than anything else we are shown.  The tragedy and the realism of how she deals with the problems of the birth, taking place without the help of modern medicine, are both moving and enlightening.

The brief meeting between Cassandra and Jane Austen’s sister, also called Cassandra, is another strikingly well done scene. It makes us remember, with a shock, that Cassandra Franklin doesn’t belong to this time, for after nearly a year of living her life with her as an early 19^th century woman we, like Cassandra, have almost forgotten that this is not her normal environment.

If you like Jane Austen (or even if you don’t particularly, but do enjoy time travel) this is a book you shouldn’t miss. Original, expertly done, fascinating – and thoroughly recommended.

Gerry blogs regularly over at Gerry’s Books. And if you like her reviewing style you’ll love her books.

Her debut novel Belfast Girls is available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk. Her latest novel Danger Danger is of course also available on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

If you’re reading this Wednesday evening GMT then no links working and not many images. Sorry! Disrupted net service all day and I’m rushing this through now to meet my Wednesday deadline, with a net speed that makes dial-up look like warp-speed. So the links will be updated asap. Or if you’re desperate to buy The Time Baroness just use the serach engine in your preferred ebook store.

I’ll just end by saying I never had the pleasure of reading Austen for pleasure until rather late in life. Sadly I was first introduced to Austen through a very incompetent English teacher who put most of the class off the classics for life, so I’m deeply envious of Gerry first discovering Austen at nine.

Though I’m not sure I would have appreciated the finer points of Pride and Prejudice as a nine year old boy, so maybe that was for the best. Although I did read Little Women at about that age, so maybe I would have.  Who knows…

But in the spirit of time travel and Austen, why not go back in time to when you first discovered Jane Austen and tell us all about it in the comments.

 

2011

12/28

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mark williams - the international indie author

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Georgina Young-Ellis
Gerry McCullough

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