Longbourn by Jo Baker at EIL

Just a quick note to mention that my review of Jo Baker's Longbourn is up at Escape Into Life. As I mention at the outset of the review, I'm a bit dubious about novels set in Austenland, but Adrian McKinty mentioned it on his blog, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and he's usually a reliable source for good reading. And he was right, it's good. Baker manages to level a fair amount of class critique without beating you over the head with it too much.

I thought I would link to a very apt poem that Linh Dinh put up on his blog, Postcards from the End of America. Usually the site features his photographs, but occasionally he'll post prose or poetry. The poem is called Clean, Clean, Clean. Start reading even the first couple of pages of Longbourn and you'll get the connection.

Longbourn is also slated to be a movie. I thought there was a trailer, but I guess it's a bit early for that. I'm curious about how they'll do it, as in thinking about the book, I realize that if the filmmakers are true to the story, there will be a lot less focus on upstairs fashion and luxury and a lot more focus on downstairs grime and guts than is usually the case in these period things.

Here's a short book trailer on a factor I noticed but didn't report on in the review.