The Ashes of Pemberley

If you loved reading Jane Austen's characters, then you will enjoy The Ashes of Pemberley, a novel about Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy and Edward and Elinor Ferrars and their families in the context of male love. In a short space of historical time, the two male protagonists are illuminated as men coming into a state of deeply felt love - a new and powerful experience for each one. In this, they continue Austen's concern to show that men can love as profoundly as women - a truth spoken out explicitly through Captain Wentworth and his friend Harville at the end of Persuasion.

Charles Bingley, the third of four men in this novel who are burgeoning through fealty to Love's new reality for them, shows both his enormous loyalty to Darcy and a strong masculine coming through a gentle heart. The addition of a new character, Nicholas Saunders, a fitting beau for Margaret Dashwood, now nineteen, brings excitement through an intriguing past and his passion as a music composer and conductor in his ensemble at one of London's most famous churches.

In his role as Pastor at Delaford, Edward Ferrars becomes involved with the early days of agricultural rebellion and, as a family man of the cloth, finds limitations in the degree of participation practicable to him - something that causes much soul-searching and distress. The fact that the parish lies within an area of increasing protestation not far from Tolpuddle is not to be missed.