A Son of the Rock

Pan, 2022, 254 p

This book is adorned with a roundel on its front cover proclaiming “JANE AUSTEN’s unfinished novel completed by JOAN AIKEN.” This is at best a misdirection and, more bluntly, not true. I have read the fragment of The Watsons which Jane Austen had written before her death and not one word of it appears here. To be sure events which took place in it are referred to but the action of this novel takes place after that of the fragment. It would be more true to say that Emma Watson is inspired by Jane Austen. However, what it definitely is not, is a work by Jane Austen. It is firmly Aiken’s creation, though she has adopted some of the characters form the fragment and added a few of her own.

None of the feeling of Austen is present here. Situations, social arrangements and prejudices maybe, but the details and especially the dialogue do not have the Austen ring.

This is not to decry the novel. As a novel it is fine enough, if a little derivative of Austen (which is, of course, to be expected,) but it is all too overwrought, too busy yet still a little perfunctory with its sources, certainly not inventive enough. Too many familiar circumstances from Austen’s work appear, a girl taken in by her parents’ sibling, a haughty lady from a stately home, relatives in London helpful to a point, an eligible Navy officer away for a prolonged period, the preoccupation with marriage possibilities – though admittedly that is an Austen constant. (But in this context I doubt an incestuous prospective union – albeit its participants are unaware of their unfortunate connection – would have flowed from Austen’s pen.)

Read this as a Regency novel by all means, but not as representative of Austen.

Pedant’s corner:- Bluestocking (did this word exist in Regency times?) “Red Coats” (why the capitalisation? ‘redcoats’ – red coat was used two lines later.) Edwards’ (Edwards’s,) Brightelmstone, (this old name for Brighton is usually spelled ‘Brighthelmstone’. Brighton, though, had been mentioned earlier in the book,) “salicylate of sodium, with iodide of potassium” (I doubt these names would have been in use in Regency times: both sodium and potassium were only isolated in 1807.)