05/02/2016
Stillman (The Last Days of Disco) cleverly reimagines a little-known Jane Austen character, Lady Susan Vernon from the unpublished novel Lady Susan, following her doting nephew's attempt to clear Aunt Susan's name and restore her reputation. Lady Susan, a recent widow, spends a few months with friends until gossip of a romantic scandal sends her fleeing to her brother and sister-in-law. Marriage plots abound for both Lady Susan and her young daughter, Frederica, as she seeks to establish secure matches that guarantee they will both be well cared for, but it is the means by which Lady Susan procures these proposals that call her character into question. Her sister-in-law, Catherine Vernon (née DeCourcy), and the DeCourcy family are convinced by the gossip surrounding Lady Susan and fear that she means to use her wit and beauty to marry into their family via Catherine's brother, Reginald DeCourcy. A cast of suitors, friends and otherwise, add perspective and dimension to Lady Susan's true motives, and the narrator of the account, Lady Susan's nephew, Martin Rufus Martin-Colonna de Cesari-Rocca, brings both quirky and hilarious flavor to Stillman's story. Martin's commentary and frequent interjections, particularly his thoughts on original author Jane Austen (referred to as the Spinster Authoress), serve as both comedic social commentary and a glimpse into the trivial dramas of the English aristocracy. (May)
Love & Friendship: In Which Jane Austen's Lady Susan Vernon Is Entirely Vindicated
Narrated by Matt Addis
Whit StillmanUnabridged — 7 hours, 2 minutes
Love & Friendship: In Which Jane Austen's Lady Susan Vernon Is Entirely Vindicated
Narrated by Matt Addis
Whit StillmanUnabridged — 7 hours, 2 minutes
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Overview
Impossibly beautiful, disarmingly witty, and completely self-absorbed: Meet Lady Susan Vernon, both the heart and the thorn of Love & Friendship. Recently widowed with a daughter who's coming of age as quickly as their funds are dwindling, Lady Susan makes it her mission to find them wealthy husbands--and fast. But when her attempts to secure their futures result only in the wrath of a prominent conquest's wife and the title of 'most accomplished coquette in England', Lady Susan must rethink her strategy. Unannounced, she arrives at her brother-in-law's country estate. Here she intends to take refuge - in no less than luxury, of course - from the colorful rumors trailing her, while finding another avenue to 'I do'. Before the scandalizing gossip can run its course, though, romantic triangles ensue. A SPECIAL EDITION FEATURING JANE AUSTEN'S ORIGINAL NOVELLA AS ANNOTATED BY THE NARRATOR
Editorial Reviews
PRAISE FOR LOVE & FRIENDSHIP: THE BOOK
"A postmodern confection [that's] very, very funny."—Penelope Green, New York Times
"In the ever-booming Austen spinoff industry, where paeans to Mr. Darcy are the norm, rewriting a work of the master's in the guise of one of her detractors makes for an eccentrically cheeky tribute."—Alexandra Schwartz, New Yorker
"A merry comedy of pride, prejudice, and duplicity.... Silly, sly, eccentric characters and brisk chatter make for a diverting romp."—Kirkus Reviews
"Lady Susan is finally getting some long overdue respect."—Alexandra Alter,New York Times
"Witty and delightful."—BookPage
"Both quirky and hilarious."—Publishers Weekly
"Lady Susan remains deliciously wicked."—Julia Felsenthal, Vogue
"[A] delicately sincere inversion of Austen's amused irony.... Stillman's gravity comes from the way he both understands the terrors of social relations—the pursuit of love and friendship—and also admires all strategies in artifice that might soften these terrors, subvert the tyranny of misinterpretation, and restore a version of utopia."—Adam Thirlwell, New York Review of Books
"Show[s] a deep familiarity with [Austen's] life, work, and times."—Laura Miller,Slate
"Wickedly funny."—Holly Parmalee, Serendipity
"Stillman has a fine eye for social niceties."—Library Journal, Editor's Pick
"If you like your Austen subversive, cruel, funny and outrageous, then you will love Stillman's Love & Friendship."—Paula Byrne, The Times (UK)
"One of the classiest book-to-movie novelizations that's ever existed."—Rebecca Pahle, Film Journal International
PRAISE FOR LOVE & FRIENDSHIP:THE FILM
"A racy delight."—Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
"[A] fast, precise, and giddily dialectical costume romp.... Stillman captures the exquisite eroticism of high-society manners."—Richard Brody, New Yorker
"Delightfully droll.... Stillman so effortlessly, elegantly bridges the gap between his conniving aristocrats and Austen's that it's difficult to say where one's sensibility ends and the other's begins."—Kyle Smith, New York Post
"Flat-out hilarious — find me a funnier screen stab at Austen, and I'm tempted to offer your money back personally."—Tim Robey, Telegraph
"A supremely elegant and delicately filigreed adaptation of Jane Austen's epistolary novella Lady Susan."—Justin Chang, Variety
"The perfect marriage between Stillman's absurdist wit and Austen's period manners."—Anthony D'Alessandro, Deadline
"So clever in its repartee."—Flavorwire
03/15/2016
As evidenced by his cult favorite Metropolitan, filmmaker Stillman has a fine eye for social niceties, so he should do well with this reworking of Jane Austen's unfinished early novella Lady Susan. In the 1790s, beautiful widow Lady Susan Vernon drops in unannounced at her brother-in-law's estate so that she can elude some unpleasant gossip. There, she starts husband hunting for both herself and daughter Frederica, who's not eager to take the debutante route. Stillman adds narration from a character too, too devoted to the wily Lady Susan. Look for a spring release of a film based on the expanded story starring Chloe Sevigny, Kate Beckinsale, and Stephen Fry; with a 40,000-copy first printing.
2016-03-30
A merry comedy of pride, prejudice, and duplicity. In this spoof on a certain "spinster authoress" (aka Jane Austen), writer, director, and novelist Stillman (The Last Days of Disco, With Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards, 2000) has fashioned a frothy tale narrated by the nephew of one Lady Susan Vernon, the title character of Lady Susan, an unfinished epistolary novel published more than 50 years after Austen's death. Unfairly maligned by the authoress, Lady Susan, the narrator maintains, was "the kindest, most delightful woman anyone could know, a shining ornament to our Society and Nation." She was not a blatant flirt who stole one woman's husband and another's lover. She did not contrive to marry her daughter off to a man the girl despised; she was not a deceiver and manipulator who treated truth gingerly. "Facts are horrid things!" she once exclaimed, but the narrator does not take that remark at all seriously. Facts were horrid things in his own life: he confesses that he writes from "the ignoble abode" of prison, where he is serving a sentence for "financial and legal difficulties," including embezzling funds that he "had every intention of restoring." Determined to give a true and complete account, he includes footnotes for words and phrases that he supposes are not familiar to his readers: the etymology of "vindication," for example, and the origin of the phrase "under par." He is a stickler for punctuation: a schoolmaster convinced him of its importance in all discourse. "Over the intervening years," he writes, "I have learned that what we are taught by our elders, no matter how seemingly improbable or ridiculous, is nearly always to be true." The narrator appends his earnest narrative with a trove of his aunt's letters, which he claims have been altered by the authoress to cast the estimable Lady Susan in a bad light. Silly, sly, eccentric characters and brisk chatter make for a diverting romp.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940173838216 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hachette Audio |
| Publication date: | 05/03/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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