Once in a while I still get review books from Simon & Schuster, and the latest is Writing Jane Austen, by Elizabeth Anston. I’d never heard of Anston before, but she seems to have written yet another series of Pride and Prejudice sequels, beginning, I gather, with Mr. Darcy’s Daughter. (One day, I predict, Pride and Prejudice sequels will have their own section in the bookstores.) This, however, is a contemporary novel, written in a contemporary voice.

Georgina Jackson is a critically acclaimed author. She’s written precisely one book, Magdalene Crib, an historical novel set in the late Victorian era, concerning a woman who has a hellish life from childhood on, all because of the horrible social conditions of the time. The word “patriarchy” doesn’t appear in the descriptions of Magdalene Crib, but I could hear it floating about. The critics lauded it, but the readers weren’t so enthused; and possibly neither were the critics. When Jackson meets one, and asks whether he enjoyed the book, he replies, “Was I meant to?”

But Georgina’s efforts to write a sequel have come to nothing…until her agent, a nasty piece of work, browbeats here into signing a non-disclosure agreement and a contract—to complete an unfinished Jane Austen manuscript (one chapter only) of a novel called Love and Friendship. The difficulties are immense: not only did Austen write during a much earlier period, one that Georgina’s not familiar with, but Georgina holds Austen in utter contempt for writing frivolous books about girls who can’t think about anything but marriage. Not, of course, that she’s actually read any of them…. She doesn’t want to write the book, but on the other hand if she doesn’t she won’t be able to afford to remain in England, which she loves. Oh, help!

It’s a fun premise, and I enjoyed it, more or less, the more so as I had held a similar opinion of Jane Austen until I actually read something of hers. The first part of it is also the funniest, as Georgina keeps running into people who love Jane Austen while avoiding reading anything by or about her, but it’s also the part I had the most trouble reading. Georgina has very little time to write the book, and she keeps wasting it, and the sense of impending doom gets to me.

In the end, of course, and despite the dragon lady of an agent and her horrible publisher, and with much Love and Friendship, Georgina triumphs. Better still, by the end she’s no longer the kind of person who’d write a book like Magdalene Crib.

Writing Jane Austen is a fairly light and frothy book, and an imperfect one; the ending’s a little weak, if ultimately satisfactory, and some of the threats from earlier in the book fizzle out rather than really paying off. But there are some genuinely funny moments, and if you like Jane Austen you might find it a pleasant afternoon’s entertainment.