The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James

The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James book cover

When I picked this book from my local library I missed “A Novel” part of the title. I thought these were actual journal diaries or letters of Jane Austen. So I was a tad disappointed when I realized that was not the case.

The Lost Memoirs Of Jane Austen joins the large pool of professional fan-fiction that has sprouted around Austen’s life and works.  I have read and enjoyed few of those, here and here,

It is always interesting to speculate on the disposition of a famous character and read a story woven around her -irrespective if the character was fictional or real.

Now, Jane Austen has inspired so many Regency romances that its only natural to expect that she may have had one similar romance in her life. And this forms the premise of “The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen”. Jane Austen decides late in life to chronicle key moments in her life, her one true love and her journey in becoming a published author so in the distant future someone might discover this facet of her life. Some part of the ‘memoirs’ are based on true incidents and some are totally fictionalized.

I was totally gripped in the love story between Jane And Mr. Ashford. How wonderful if it had been true! I also liked reading about the various places where Jane stayed and being a part of her daily life.

However, overall, I was honestly quite disappointed even though this is well written book.  Jane Austen is what you would hope she would be – very much like Lizzie Bennet. But I think that is the main problem. You don’t want her to be Lizzie Bennet, right?

As a reader you want Jane to have a personality entirely of her own and not that of her created characters. In the narrative, James borrows heavily from the Jane’s novels in both dialogs and situations. And yes we know life inspires art and its quite possible that Jane created stories out of what she observed but it starts getting annoying at some point.

It also gets distracting  because instead of focusing on the book you are more interested in trying to connect to Austen’s published works. It also reflects lack of originality on the author’s part. I was often wondering, if she was running out of ideas or information on Jane’s life that she picked up snippets from her works instead.

Read it or skip The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen?

I am on the fence for this but Well I did not like it. But it doesn’t mean at all that it was a bad book. I would recommend it to anyone who must compulsively read everything written by and on Jane Austen 🙂

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