This has been sitting on the TBR pile for ages. I had a bit of a run a while back on what one regular visitor called 'cod Jane Austen' (you know who you are, Kym!) and then somehow didn't fancy any more for a while. When I picked this up a couple of days ago in an idle moment, I wasn't really expecting to enjoy it all that much -- but I did, so there you are. Of course I should have realised it must be OK because it was written, or rather completed, by the wonderful Joan Aiken. Only last week I was reading some of her stories, contained in a book called A Handful of Gold, to my two grandsons. It's a measure of how good they were that they were enjoyed in about equal measure by Cai (6), George (12), my daughter and myself. So -- The Watsons. As an Austen lover and erstwhile Austen teacher, I was already familiar with the short, and I have to say not wildly promising, fragment that Austen wrote in about 1806 and abandoned. But Aiken picks it up and runs with it with great enthusiasm, and I found it immensely readable.
One of the interesting things about Austen's uncompleted fragment is the fact that the Watson family, though of course well born, is poor -- more so than any of the families at the centre of her other books, except, I suppose, the ones in Sense and Sensibility. Mr Watson, a widower, is an invalid (though a much less annoying one than the father of the more famous Emma). They can't afford a carriage of their own, have only one servant, the ancient and loyal Nanny, and have to involve themselves in household duties like the weekly 'great wash'. Emma herself has been brought up by an aunt at a distance from the rest of the family, with whom she is reunited at the beginning of the book when her aunt remarries and goes to live in Ireland. She has three older, unmarried sisters, of varying degrees of unpleasantness, and a couple of brothers, one nice one not. There is a certain harshness and slight desperation in these circumstances -- perhaps that was what made JA give up writing it? But Aiken, of course, makes it all come out right in the end. What I admired most about her continuation was the way she manages to do three things successfully: she catches Austen's style so well that you are never, or rarely, aware that you are reading someone else's version; she tells a really good story, one that keeps you interested throughout; and she is true to the spirit of Austen's novels. By this, I think I mean that Emma is a heroine of whom JA herself would not be ashamed. She is intelligent, good-hearted and right thinking -- though I have to say that there are a few moments when she voices sentiments which are more obviously feminist than JA ever expressed, openly at least. Austen fans will recognise certain characters and situations which are reminiscent of those in other novels -- Lady Osborne has a touch of Lady Catherine de Burgh, Robert Watson somewhat resembles Eleanor and Marianne's unpleasant brother, Emma's Aunt Maria's return to England in poor health might put you in mind of Mrs Smith in Persuasion, and so on. But these are only hints, not slavish copies, and there are numerous other excellent characters, many developed from the sketches in Austen's original. There is so much enjoyment to be had in following the ups and downs, the sadnesses and joys, the successes and failures of Emma and her sisters. Another one I would recommend, in other words!