On the Third Day of Lightfall (Readathon)

Another long travel day today, so this is going to be a very short update. I’m still enjoying Manslaughter Park, but something feels off about Tom’s character at the moment. In the scene where the will is read, Tom is acting like a total jerk. I feel like Maria and Julia were the jerks, not Tom (or Edmund, obviously). And his behavior especially doesn’t sit right with me when he’s leaning on misogynistic arguments with his sister (like she can’t possibly own a business, she needs to get married, etc.). It just doesn’t feel right. Unless maybe the author is setting him up to be the killer? That would be an interesting twist on the Sir Thomas / Tom dynamic from the original book…

I was curious about this book because 1) I love a cozy mystery, but also 2) there aren’t a ton of Mansfield Park retellings out there in the world. I think that’s because it’s generally the least liked of the Jane Austen novels. Mostly because everyone hates Fanny. She’s not my favorite Austen character, either, but I think that’s because she ends up being sort of a tool for the narrative that allowed Austen to make more direct commentary on things like class, society, and politics in Mansfield Park that in her other, more popular novels.

What’s interesting about reading this book is that, in addition to comparing it to the original, I keep comparing it to my own (unpublished) Mansfield Park retelling. I’ve been working on that book on and off for MANY years now. I think I started it back in 2009, maybe? Coincidentally, the Tom character in my book is also gay, but Yates is not his boyfriend. And I also tweaked the family tree so that my Fanny character and my Edmund character were not technically related, just raised in close proximity. But these are, I feel, the obvious choices to make when modernizing this novel.

I’ve been really wanting to get back to that story, and I think that’s exactly what I’m going to do. But first I want to finish the novel I’m currently working on. In the meantime, I’m going to go back to enjoying Manslaughter Park and trying to figure out whodunit (before Fanny does).