Raconteuse

American bookstore ninja/Darcy fangirl runs into Mr. Darcy in modern times on his own turf. Hi-jinks ensue. It’s amazing the impact Jane Austen has had on literature, how many times her storylines have been retold and redone even today. I’m not a hopelessly obsessive fangirl, but I do recognize her significance to literature and women’s studies. You’d be a fool not to acknowledge at least that.

In “Me & Mr. Darcy,” the protagonist Emily is so obsessed with Jane Austen that she goes on a book tour with a bunch of old ladies, retracing the steps of Austen’s life and career in and around Bath, England. She’s so deep in her obsession with all things Jane that towards the end she sees that her trip has parallels of “Pride & Prejudice” itself. There’s a Jane, a Mr. Darcy, Georgiana, and a Mr. Wickham, but not in the way that you might think.

There’s even a subplot where she hallucinates meeting Mr. Darcy several times throughout the course of the book! Let’s think about the implications of that subplot. We ALL want a Mr. Darcy for ourselves, but in actuality, he would never fit in with the modern world. In his day, women were only wives and mothers, nothing more.

Emily’s perfect vision of her own Darcy is pretty much put to bed when she realizes this. Sure, we want that handsome, rich, chivalrous man that simply does not exist in our time – if it ever did – but would we want to leave behind our modern lives for the life of Elizabeth Bennett?

Women were either servants or made to be married off. Very rarely were they able to be anything more? I’d much rather read about life in Regency England than to live in it. Although Emily makes the observation along the lines of you can’t miss what you’ve never had.

I first heard about the story from a Babysitter’s Club book. True story. I think it was from one of Stacey’s books. So when I saw it at my used bookstore, Twice Sold Tales, I snapped it up for cheap.

Patricia Ann Bergen is a 12-year-old Jewish girl living in wartime Arkansas. I guess it was customary to send POWs to America during World War II. I have never heard of such a policy before. But the author, Bette Greene, based it on her childhood in the South. So I assume she actually went through or knew someone who did go through what Patty did.

She is a lonely girl. She is the bane of her parents’ existence. She makes up fanciful stories as 12-year-olds are wont to do. She hates wearing dresses, and her hair is always a mess. Her father is not affectionate with her, and hair-trigger abusive. Her aloof and beautiful mother constantly compares Patty’s looks to her baby sister Sharon, and worries about her figure. Sharon looks like their mother but is completely unaware of the power that she holds because of it. The Bergens run a department store in town, and leave the house to be tended by their black maid, Ruth.

She has no real friends. The girls she was semi-friends with at school are at Bible camp for the summer. Her parents didn’t want her to go to Bible camp, even though she swore to lie about loving Jesus and everything. So when she meets Fredrick Anton Reiker in her parents’ store by chance, she thinks it’s a dream come true. She believes she has made a friend.

Anton speaks perfect English and is articulate and educated. He also behaves nothing like a soldier that they say he was. Patty was conditioned – as many other people were during that time – to believe that all Nazis were the worst of their stereotype. She meets him and questions what she was told. Being 12 years old, you are at that odd age when you don’t take what you’re told at face value but trust your instincts more.

Using a bit of skill, Anton escapes from the POW camp and runs across Patty again. Patty harbors him in a boarded-up garage owned by her family that doubled as her hideout for a few days. Their friendship blossoms, but it’s perfectly innocent. I’d like to think Patty matured greatly from meeting Anton. He exposed her to great authors in their short time together and made her feel worthwhile.

When Anton realizes it’s time to move on, he does so at great peril. A careless mistake Patty made casts a cloud of suspicion over her family to the point where the small-town mentality becomes its stereotype. I don’t want to spoil it. But it’s sad what the townsfolk do to the Bergens.

At the heart of it, it’s a coming-of-age story about a misunderstood girl. As such, the ending was unsatisfying to me. It left me wanting closure. But what was so unique was that I didn’t expect one. Does that make sense? I mean, there weren’t any redeeming qualities about the characters that made me feel as though they were capable of improving. No one listens to 12-year-olds. There was no chance in hell Patty had of fixing the wrongs in her life. No way, none. The ending is emotionally brutal in that sense.

The book is more suited for young adults. I’m sure if I had read it when I was younger it would have had a greater effect on me than it does in my mid-twenties. I would recommend it to girls Patty’s age and those who are struggling with their identity.