Title: Fun, but light
Product review: Misled by the marketing, I was hoping to find this a volume of accessible critical analysis of Jane Austen's influence on modern fiction. Boy, was I wrong.Only two of the essays were really thought-provoking: Lauren Baratz-Logsted's essay on Austen's heirs in chick-lit and Karen Joy Fowler's discussion of Austen's modern audience. However, I also enjoyed Jo Beverly's interesting exploration of women's economic prospects in Austen's period, which brought Elizabeth Bennet's budget into modern terms.Lawrence Watt-Evans' essay on war in Austen (or the absence of war in Austen) was very thorough if somewhat out-of-place.Aside from these stand-outs, the other essays are, for the most part, musings on Austen's relevance to the authors' personal lives -- light, amusing fare. Some of them are rewritings or sequels of part of Austen's own work, and I can't evaluate these: I found them tiresome, but perhaps that's just because they weren't what I wanted from the book.
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