I don’t think I had ever read anything by Victoria Connelly, although her books have sometimes been recommended to me on Amazon. So when I saw her novel ‘A Weekend with Mr Darcy’ at a church book sale a couple of years ago, I decided to shell out fifty cents to buy it. I quite liked the cover, and since I like Jane Austen it looked like an appealing book. However, I have a lot of unread books, and re-read many more, so it took me nearly two years to decide to read it.
It’s a light-weight but well written book that basically charts two romantic couples, in the context of a long weekend at a Jane Austen conference. This fictional ‘weekend’ appears to start on Thursday and goes until Monday morning, and is an annual event at a stately home in Hampshire where the protagonists and various other folk gather for discussions, lectures and field trips all related to the famous author.
The two main female characters are quite different. Robyn works in an admin job which she finds rather dull, but she fell into it once she had finished studying. Rather like she fell into a relationship with Jason - Jace as he’s known to his friends - and doesn’t quite know how to quit. Jace and Robyn go back a long way; he was one of her best friends at school, but now she feels they have nothing in common. She adores historical fiction, but he won’t even let her watch a film based on an Austen book. Not that he’s unkind, or deliberately manipulative, and that’s part of the problem. She doesn’t want to hurt him.
The first person we meet, however, is Katherine, who is a PhD lecturer in English literature at an Oxford college. She also writes non-fiction books connected to Jane Austen. She’s been invited to speak at the Austen conference, something she’s done before, and which she looks forward to. Like Robyn she’s a huge fan of all things related to Jane Austen, and has seen all the film versions, and read the books many times. However she’s also a secret fan of a modern author who writes steamy romances based in regency times - and she’s written letters to this author, which has led to a lengthy and enjoyable correspondence.
When Katherine arrives, a handsome man is helping someone else with a suitcase, and manages to run over her foot. It’s not a good way to be introduced, but he’s determined to get to know her, and manages to persuade her that they have a lot in common. There’s a strong attraction and things are going extremely well… except that he has a secret, one which is becoming increasingly difficult to talk about as they become more involved.
Robyn, meanwhile, has been driven to the conference by Jace, and is highly embarrassed that he keeps appearing, particularly when she’s met and is very interested in the stately home owner’s brother Dan, who works with the horses…
The two different romantic stories work well in the context of a small group of people with a shared passion for Jane Austen. There are quite a few quotations and themes from the novels, most of which I recognised, and although there’s not a huge amount of plot - most of the book takes place over the long weekend of the conference - it was very readable, surprisingly difficult to put down at times.
It’s women’s fiction of the romantic genre, so won’t appeal to those who don’t like this kind of novel - but for those who do, or who want a light read with a literary theme, I’d recommend it. There’s almost no bad language - certainly nothing excessive - and the inevitable bedroom scenes are only hinted at, with no gratuitous detail. The people feel three-dimensional, there’s some low-key humour, and there’s an entirely satisfactory (if somewhat predictable) conclusion.
I shall be looking out for other novels by Victoria Connelly in future.
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