As the title tells us, Susan is a prequel to Jane Austen’s Lady Susan. In the prequel, Susan is a girl of sixteen and we begin to see her life as it was before she develops into the character of Lady Susan. She persuades the local squire to put on a play which leads to unexpected consequences. The style of Jane Austen bursts from this book, and the reader quickly gets behind the heroine, with her strong points and her flaws. I read this book as a standalone which included some well-loved characters I had already met from previous Austen works. Susan is a precocious girl who draws the reader into the novel and makes us laugh. She is clever and, even at this young age, tends towards manipulation and making use of her many attractions to men. As with Jane Austen, Alice McVeigh’s perceptions of characters are spot on. It is an entertaining read and if you are into regency, this is a book that could help you to escape the covid blues.
“She possesses an uncommon union of symmetry, brilliancy, and grace. One is apt to expect that an impudent address will naturally attend an impudent mind – but her countenance is absolutely sweet. I am sorry it is so, for what is this but deceit?“ (from Jane Austen’s Lady Susan) Sixteen-year-old Susan Smithson – pretty but poor, clever but capricious – has just been expelled from a school for young ladies in London. At the mansion of the formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, she attracts a raffish young nobleman. But, at the first hint of scandal, her guardian dispatches her to her uncle Collins’ rectory in Kent, where her sensible cousin Alicia lives and “where nothing ever happens.” Here Susan mischievously inspires the local squire to put on a play, with consequences no one could possibly have foreseen. What with the unexpected arrival of Frank Churchill, Alicia’s falling in love and a tumultuous elopement, rural Kent will surely never seem safe again…
