By Sara Tavela
JASNA-NC met on November 14 to discuss the novel Wit & Prattles by Nancy Martin-Young. A great boon was the participation of the author, a member of our chapter!
The discussion began with a useful illumination of the differences between a historical and a contemporary regency romance. Authors Georgette Heyer and Barbara Cartland serve as major influences on the historical Regency romance—those typically clean romances that are immersed in historical details of the Regency period and strive for accuracy in that regard. Contemporary Regency romance (like Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series), on the other hand, is frequently peppered with Regency-era details like clothing or locations, but other than this ‘wallpaper’ as Nancy Martin-Young describes it, the characters and their interactions are improbable for an actual Regency setting.
This helpful context on generic distinctions in Regency romance led readers into a discussion on their experience with romance and how Wit and Prattles influenced that impression. Whether participants were regular romance readers or avoid the romance genre like the plague, Wit and Prattles exceeded expectations in terms of realism, characterization, and psychological depth.
One reader was fascinated by Lottie (Charlotte Palmer) accepting that she married someone who does not love her as much as she loves him, and a number of readers commented that the marriage between the Palmers occurring by the midpoint of the novel was a daring, but successful choice. Lottie’s influence on Thomas’s political career highlighted the strengths of her characterization and made her a heroine to root for, contrary to reader’s expectations for Austen’s minor character, the voluble Charlotte Palmer.
In response to a member’s appreciation of the use of contemporary language and style, Martin-Young revealed that the initial draft of Wit and Prattles’s first chapter sought to echo Austen’s prose. She scrapped that first copy, despite the first sentence winning an award for best crafted opening, because beta readers found the opening too difficult to get through, much like modern readers’ difficulties with encountering Austen’s prose. Multiple respondents were glad that Martin-Young landed on a contemporary voice, largely due to their frustration as readers with other continuations of Austen’s work that try to copy Austen’s voice and cannot.
A hearty discussion of Austen continuations emerged from the insights on Wit and Prattles’s initial iteration. Comments centered on characters that were “ruined” by other authors’ interpretations, such as Mr. Bennet’s maligned character in Jo Baker’s Longbourn. One member noted that continuations that focus on most-beloved characters, like Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, often incite rage in her, because the efforts to create a plot for a post-Pride and Prejudice storyline tend towards the ridiculous. Members agreed that the focus on the minor characters, the Palmers, in Wit and Prattles was a brilliant choice, particularly because these characters’ lack of backstory yielded fascinating results.
Members raved about the humorous scenes in the novel, such as Lottie’s triumphant punch of an over amorous suitor that Thomas observes and the post-wedding night breakfast with its militaristic dialogue and strategy (Martin-Young noted the influence of a scene from Alexander Pope’s mock-heroic, comic poem The Rape of the Lock for the breakfast scene’s militaristic overlay).
Readers were charmed by Wit and Prattles for its realism, psychological depth, and a burgeoning love for each of the Palmers. Readers appreciated the integration of Sense and Sensibility’s timeline (Quite a feat to follow with so much travelling about in that Austen novel!) and look with anticipation to re-reading Sense and Sensibility with an eye towards the Palmers. The organic nature of the Palmers’ relationship and the insights into each Palmer’s psychology led to joy in reading Wit and Prattles.
The author’s note that followed the novel elucidates the deviations from Austen and provides a defense of the novel Austen would approve of: Martin-Young’s authorial choices—from the interiority of the characters to historical details and Austen Easter Eggs—prompted a number of laudatory comments about Wit and Prattles.
The conversation concluded with the observation that Mrs. Jennings offered sage motherly advice to Charlotte throughout the novel. Final comments focused on the central theme of happiness as a choice and meditations on the quality of mothers in Austen’s novels.
The consensus was that Nancy Martin-Young’s Wit and Prattles was a wonderful and absorbing read, and members eagerly await the next installment in this series. Martin-Young is currently at work on book two, which focuses on Lady Middleton and widowhood in the Regency. Thank you to Erin Handly, our fearless facilitator, for another engaging conversation, and thank you to the author, Nancy Martin-Young, for joining our discussion of her delightful novel.
A further, special thanks is due to Erin Handly, who got the Virtual Book Club up and running with deft leadership; Erin is moving in December back to Pennsylvania and rejoining that chapter of JASNA, but we hope to see her in future as a participant and secondary member. Several members are stepping into the role of book club facilitator, and we all look forward to continuing the new tradition of Virtual Book Club. The next Virtual Book Club will occur in February 2022, where members will be discussing the eighteenth-century novel A Gossip’s Story by Jane West, thought to be a potential influence on Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.