King of Shadows

King of Shadows by Susan Cooper is a wonderful children’s book, not only for kids.

Nat Field is a boy actor who visits London with his American drama group to perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Globe Theatre. But soon, Nat falls ill and while he lies in isolation in the Guy’s Hospital in today’s London another wakes up in London of the year 1599 and is drawn into different reahearsals for A Midsummer Night’s Dream alongside William Shakespeare himself. He has difficulties to get along in the age of Shakespeare and to find out who he is supposed to be in this London of the past but he astonished when he first meets William Shakespeare alive.

It’s a great book not only about A Midsummer Night’s Dream but also about Shakespeare and the age of him. You get drawn into an London of the Elizabethian age and get to know the life at that time and the life on and behind the stage of The Globe Theater. Kings of Shadows has casted a spell over me and I’ve to admit that I become a big fan of Shakespeare since I’ve read this book.

Pride & Prejudice – recap

Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, is the most popular novel of Jane Austen. Therefore you can find a lot of film adaptions and also a musical of this great piece of English literature.

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet do have five daughters who they want to wed with appropriate young men. Espacially Mrs. Bennet is pretty concentrated on finding a good match for her daughters, while her husband wants his daughters to be happy, in first place.

One day the new and wealthy neighbour Mr. Bingley shows up and Mrs. Bennet does everything to support the possibility that he might marry one of the young ladies. While Mr. Bingley is interessted in the oldest daughter Jane, his also moneyed friend Mr. Darcy keeps an eye on the second oldest daughter Elizabeth. But Elizabeth takes an instant dislike to Darcy after he coldly rebuffs her attempts at conversation and so the problems start to develope because Lizzie, the heroine, is the only one of the daughters who is convinced not to marry except of true love. When she comes to know that Darcy is trying to avoid the relation between Bingley and her sister Jane, she starts flirting with Mr. Wickham. He is an old rival of Darcy and tells her that Darcy wronged him out of jealousy some time ago. Things are developing and Lizzie finds out that Wickham has told her the story from a wrong perception to hide that he was the bad guy.

Elizabeth is told that Darcy paied the marriage of her youngest sister Lydia who has run away with Wickham. When Bingley and Darcy return to the Bennets, Jane accepts Bingley’s proposal of marriage. A last interruption follows by Lady Catherine, Darcy’s aunt, who has a talk to Lizzie and insists that she renounce Darcy because he’ll marry her daughter. Elizabeth refuses and leave the house to go walking on the moors at dawn. There she meets Darcy who has heared of what his aunt has done. He admits his love and Lizzie finally accepts his proposal and assures her father that she really loves Darcy.

Jane Austen Book Club – recap

California – Five women decide to start a “Jane Austen Book Club”. There is Sylvia who is left by her husband after plenty of years, her lesbian daughter Allegra in her early twenties who enjoys to live in a way of “no risk, no fun” and only wants to solace her mother. Moreover there is Bernadette, a strong woman and a good friend who has the idea for the club, Prudie who is a young and unhappy married french teacher in high school and Jocelyn, a single woman who only lives for her dogs and who accidently gets to knwo Grigg, a young man who is more interested in sci-fi then in romantic literature but hopes to get on with Jocelyn by joining the book club. Jocelyn’s idea of inviting Grigg to the club was to set him up with Sylvia in order that she gets over her divorce but as it’s mostly in reallife the things are going to be different…

At their first meeting everyone chooses one of Austen’s books. First thing first, they start reading all those books and meet regularly to discuss the books but none of them realise that all their lifes start to be similar to the life of one of Austen’s characters.

Bernadette = Mrs. Gradiner in Pride and Prejudice
Sylvia = Fanny Price in Mansfield Park
Allegra = Marianne in Sense and Sensibility
Prudie = Anna Elliot in Persuasion (cf. prude)
Jocelyn = Emma in Emma
Grigg = represents all the misunderstood male characters in Austen’s novels

It’s a brilliant film for all the bookworms out there, lovers of romantic stories and of course especially for those who love Jane Austen’s novels. Enjoy it!